Lying is something we don’t want our children to do because it undermines trust.

While pre-schoolers can mix up reality and fantasy, by primary school children should know the difference between the two.

There are many reasons why a child may lie. Sometimes it’s to avoid what they see will be unfair punishment. If children see others getting away with lying, they may try it.

Your child may tell stories to others to be cool. Children who tell boastful lies can be lonely, bored or have low self-esteem.

With younger children, it’s sometimes easier to tell when they’re lying. Their story doesn’t sound right or they break into a smile as their plot unravels.

A few simple questions can also reveal a lie. Asking how your child came to have $10 might include some calm, clear questions about when, where, who was with them, or the order of events.

To discourage lying, parents need to discuss it with their children. It’s important your child knows lying is unacceptable, and the effects of it. You could calmly tell your child: “I feel angry and disappointed when you lie. It makes it hard to believe anything you say. If you keep telling lies nobody will trust you.”

Give your child opportunities to be honest and praise them for it. Your positive response to their behaviour will encourage them to repeat their honesty. Tell them you will give them chances to be honest and try it out. For example, if you know they haven’t tidied their room, ask. You will know whether they are being honest.

If your child finds it hard not to tell lies, set up a written contract signed by you and your child. It should state what you expect your child to do and the rewards and consequences that will follow. Put it up on the fridge. If your child lies, the consequences are clearly listed in the contract. As your child learns to not lie, you will no longer need a written contract.

If your child owns up to doing something they know you would not have allowed them to do make sure you praise them for their honesty, before you deal with the misbehaviour. (…)

Source: springfield-news.whereilive.com.au - News Limited Community Newspapers, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/69cklf

Forget Mozart CDs and Baby Einstein videos, Boston’s mayor is urging parents to teach preschool children the old-fashioned way: by talking, reading, and playing with them.

Hoping to turn a new page on early-childhood education in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared today as “Talk, Read, Play Day” in conjunction with Boston public schools’ Countdown to Kindergarten program and ReadBoston.

The day is part of a new public awareness campaign focused on the role of parents and their responsibility as their child’s “first teacher,” from birth until age 5.

The program’s three components of interaction meld to give babies and toddlers essential skills. Talking, reading, and playing help young children develop longer attention spans, larger vocabularies, and proper social interactions as well as foster creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills, Menino said.

“Talk, Read, Play” is part of Thrive in 5, Boston’s new 10-year plan, spearheaded by Menino and the United Way, to ensure Boston children are prepared for educational success.

The program, implemented in March after two years of planning and $3.25 million in funding from the city, the United Way, and area hospitals, highlights the importance of a child’s first five years in five areas of growth: language development, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, social and emotional development, and physical and motor development.

Source: Boston Globe, United States
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/12/mayor_to_parents_read_to_children/

10 year old, Aaryan casually asked his mother, “What’s the big deal about vibrating condoms? Aren’t condoms the good guys who keep HIV out of the picture?” His parents were caught off guard. They had no answer to their son’s question. They were used to answering their 10 year old’s questions on the solar system and global warming, but talking about condoms with their 10 year old was something that they were not prepared. They knew that they had to ‘have the talk’ but the details of when and who were comfortably shelved back. Seema, his mother shockingly said, “10 is not an age to talk about sex!” Well, as parents, we always feel its not the right time. But our children are growing up faster than we realize. And they are more aware of their surroundings than we give them credit for.

We agree that talking about sex and puberty with your kids is difficult. Like Lena, a mother of two teenager children says, “I’ vent spoken to my children about sex. I assumed that with the constant bombardment by our media, they will pick up all that they need to.” A wrong approach, according to Dr. Sheetal Pradhan, a child psychologist, who says, “ Media tends to portray emotions in extreme – no doubt the young mind picks up all that’s there, but the child does not know the difference between the good and the bad. He watches the drama unfold between the hero and the heroine…he watches them run around trees and kiss under the stars. He sees everyone around him smiling…and assumes that it’s the right thing to do!” And when Lena was called by the school counselor because her daughter was caught ‘kissing’ in the empty class room, hell hath no fury! But it was too late. Maya, her teenage daughter was experimenting with all that she had seen. Her parents hadn’t spoken to her and she just assumed that it was ok!

Shocking! But more and more parents are faced with daunting challenge of fast forwarding the clock and having ‘the talk’ at an early age. Talking early helps to establish a relationship with your kids that will continue as they get older. So that by the time they reach the rebellious teens, they’ll not only know the facts, but they’ll feel they can be open with you about their feelings and what’s going on in their lives.

Why is talking about sex important?

Children will learn about sex whether or not you want them to. “The sources are many, but it may not always be the right information. A gallimaufry of information would leave your child confused and usually is a trigger to experimenting”, says Dr. Sheetal. She adds, “As a parent, you play a very important role in making sure that the information is right. While our children need to know the biological facts about sex, they also need to understand that sexual relationships involve caring, concern and responsibility. Very often the child sees a movie wherein two people meet and later end up in bed together. But you need to educate them that in real life there is time to get to know each other — time to hold hands, go bowling, see a movie, or just talk. Children need to know that this is an important part of a caring relationship.”

When should I start?

A dilemma faced by all parents…but child psychologists across believe earlier the better. When they are young, the first question that would crop up is “where do babies come from?” And before you know it, puberty would hit in and your child needs the right information before they start experiencing bodily changes.

I’m uncomfortable talking about sex with my child

“Thinking back, my parents never educated me about sex. My mother had an open woman to woman conversation only after I got married.” When I asked her, she said, she was uncomfortable. And I don’t blame her. It is difficult talking to your child about sex. How do you get down to the basics? But, avoiding it is not the solution. No one said parenting was going to be easy. The discussion is what is important and being honest about your awkward feelings shows your child how to face difficult situations. Its okay to say something like, “You know, I’m uncomfortable talking about sex because my parents never talked with me about it. But I want us to be able to talk about anything—including sex—so please come to me if you have any questions. And if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out.”

Bringing it up

1. Use everyday situations to start conversations. TV programmes are often a good opportunity to talk about relationships, or talk when you’re doing something like the washing up. This makes your child feel that sex is a normal part of family life and not a special subject.

2. Children notice the tone of what you say as much as what you say. So don’t get cross or put them down.

3. If you don’t know the answer, say so but find out later.

4. Try to be truthful as stories about storks delivering babies just confuse children.

What if my child does not want to talk to me?

13 year Mia would roll her eyes every time her mother would broach the topic of sex! She would rather read about it from Mills and Boons and the net, because she says, “the information is so cool and talking to ma is boring”. Teenagers often find it much harder to talk to their parents about sex, so it’s important talk to children when they’re much younger, rather than leaving it until they feel really awkward. You may have to accept that your teenager doesn’t want to talk to you. Children need privacy and the chance to make their own decisions, but to have your support when they need it. You can help by making sure that they know where else to get advice if they don’t want to discuss these issues with you.

Source: MSN India, India
http://lifestyle.in.msn.com/relationships/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1695993

‘A fox could bite my bottom’: Childhood worries and anxieties may be influenced by the anxieties of their parents

I grew up in the 1970s. To me it seemed a pretty anxious era. The Cold War, unemployment, staggering blindly around the house during power-cuts. Yet today, research shows, we are more anxious than ever. Children in particular are feeling the impact.

A recent report found that children as young as 8 are worried about the world today and a third of 10 and 11-year-olds are concerned about the credit crunch. And the Government has just announced that schools are to receive an extra £4.5 million to teach students about terrorism and violent extremism.

Against this backdrop, psychologists at Sussex University have embarked on research into the role that parents may play in transmitting anxiety to their children. At the Sussex University psychology lab, Isaac Maltby, 9, approaches with trepidation two cardboard boxes labelled “quoll” and “cuscus”.

A researcher asks if he’d like to stroke the animals inside. Isaac boldly puts his hand into the hole in the quoll’s box. Approaching the cuscus he is more circumspect, inserting his hand slowly, pulling it out again quickly.

His mother, Candida Maltby, 40, looks even more nervous when she comes into the room. “OK,” she murmurs, inching her fingertips in. “Feels still asleep to me,” she adds, swiftly pulling back.

Over the previous hour, Isaac and Candida have taken part in tests aimed at investigating how Candida’s feelings about these unusual animals might affect how confident her son is about them. When he was first told about the cuscus, Isaac sounded curious, keen to stroke one. As his mother’s trepidation became clear, so he, too, became more cautious.

Though the research is still incomplete, it looks likely to show scientifically what many parents feel instinctively: that children not only take seriously what their parents say about potential dangers, but are equally alert to more subtle, non- verbal clues. As Dr Andy Field, of Sussex University, puts it: “Do anxious parents give visual cues to their children that are anxiety-provoking? And do they overlook signs of anxiety in their children?”

Other adults can also let children down, particularly when it comes to social anxiety. “You have teachers saying things such as: ‘this child doesn’t really engage’. If I hear that, I think: they want to engage, but they’re anxious,” Dr Field says.

A child’s early environment can also be important, says Graham Music, child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London. “Recent research has shown that maternal anxiety can be transmitted in utero; stress hormones can be transmitted across the placenta. As they grow up, children are often emotional barometers of their environments.”

There are times, though, when a child can have extremely high levels of anxiety, but may not show it. Music says: “Attachment experiments show that one-year-olds who don’t cry when their mothers leave them alone in a room, and who seem not to care, often have the same physiological signs of stress as the babies who cry out when left.” While some children might go into a “cut-off, almost dissociated state”, others “become very reactive to almost every stimulus, and these often become out-of-control children”.

What’s the best advice for most of us, when we find ourselves confronted by a fearful child? Sam Cartwright-Hatton, of Manchester University, says that the first thing to do is to check your general parenting environment. “For a sensitive child, things need to be calm, clear, warm and consistent. Avoid shouting and smacking.”

Show confidence to your children, even if you don’t feel it. “If you’re scared of dogs, try not to leap 6ft in the air. Keep calm.” And monitor what you tell children - whether about the environment, the economy or creepy-crawlies.

If all else fails, contact your GP and ask for professional help. “Beware the advice that children just grow out of anxieties,” she says. “They usually don’t.”

ANXIETY TIMELINE

0-2 YEARS Unusual situations, water, heights, not being around care-givers, fears about survival.

3-5 YEARS Ghosts, goblins, nightmares, monsters under the bed, increasing awareness of threat in the immediate environment.

5-8 YEARS Animals, growing awareness of the real threat in the immediate environment. Children of this age are aware that, while very mobile, they are still small and vulnerable.

9-11 YEARS Personal injury, fears of injections, breaking arms and legs.

11-13 YEARS Social anxieties, social phobias, fears about one’s place in the hierarchy, fears of being cast out if you don’t have the “right” clothes or trainers.

What children really fear

Elsie, 3 “I get scared when someone says they don’t want to be my friend and they don’t want to play with me any more.”

Charlie, 5 “In the daytime foxes have gone to bed but when they come out at night, a fox could bite my bottom.”

Millie, 5 “I am a bit scared of carrots. I used to be scared of pear but now I know it is nice.”

Maddie, 6 “I always tuck the duvet under my legs when I go to sleep because I don’t want snakes to eat my feet. When I was little the snakes got in and ate my feet.”

Jess, 6 “In the night, when everyone’s asleep, I can hear footsteps going up the stairs and I feel scared. I think there’s kind of a monster creeping up the stairs.”

Josh, 8 “It’s scary to think of the pollution destroying all the rainforest so the animals haven’t got anything to eat and then the plants will die and the human race will die.”

Nye, 9 “I don’t like burglars. When there’s a loud noise upstairs I always think that there’s a burglar breaking in.”

Ira, 10 “I’m scared of hookworms and tapeworms. I hate the thought of having one in my body because they worm their way into you and live inside you.”

Tula, 11 “I worry about all the people in Africa dying and I feel I should be doing something about it. I also worry about my house setting on fire.”

Lemar, 12 “I want to drive a car when I’m older, so I worry about petrol prices and more people driving electric cars which are really dangerous and will cause road deaths because people won’t hear them.”

Amy, 13 “It scares me thinking that one day I might get so old that I lose my sense of humour and no one wants to be friends with me because I’m no fun.”

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5124499.ece

Another hearty good morning as we head into the winter! But never mind that, today I begin a series of as yet indeterminate length on thinking critically:

Be wary

We’ve all heard that you can’t believe everything you read. It is true! If reading were just a matter of deciphering the letters, words and sentences, it’d be a lot easier. But to be truly well informed and smart, you have to read critically too. That means going beyond the mere basic reading skills into thinking and research skills. If you can’t believe everything you read, although you can believe much of what you read, then how can you tell what to believe and what to dismiss or take with a grain of salt?

Basics

There are many ways. Start with your own knowledge. If you think you know for sure that something is true but somebody is saying something different, then it’s time to a) double check that you are correct; and b) check other things the writer is saying. It won’t take long to find out if the writer is trustworthy.

What if you don’t know either way? Reputations help sometimes. Are they trustworthy, is the publication usually trustworthy, are the credentials of the author credible? These don’t guarantee correctness, but they are positive signs.

Truly important is attribution. Is a writer explicit about his or her sources or vague? If vague, be alert! “As everybody knows. . .” or “it is common knowledge. . .” and similar phrases are often used to hide a lack of research. Such writers often have no facts, just an opinion. Do you know whatever the author says everyone knows? Do your friends or co-workers know? Be suspicious! Look it up if it matters. Generalizations are not always a bad thing, but they can be, and often are, abused.

Specifics

Be alert for specific citations to back up cited facts or contentions: “in experiments that we reported in the journal Science, we found. . .” tells you the writer is one of the experimenters, that a proper report of results exists and it can be found in a respected scientific journal. You can go to the journal and check it out! Such citations help keep writers honest.

The key word is “specific.” Academic footnotes require citations right to the page number and are common in good books. In the media it is often more vague. Still, the information ought to be enough so you can look it up. “As Pierre Trudeau once said. . .”, is too vague to easily verify, but “as Pierre Trudeau said as he welcomed the constitution home. . .” gives enough information for it to be checked. In the media, much is also direct attribution (he said. . . she said. . .) from a reporter who got it first-hand. Just be aware that sometimes people are accidentally misquoted. Check to see if there was a subsequent correction or denial.

Check it!

Still suspicious? Check the citations. That’s why they are there! Most times the citations will support the writer, but I’ve seen more than one that actually says the opposite when you check it out, the writer having taken one small line out of context to make it look like impressive support when in fact it was no support at all. Such writers hope that by giving a citation most readers will assume they are being honest with the facts and won’t check.

The Internet’s Snopes.com site is indispensable to those questioning the veracity of information. It isn’t perfect, but it works very hard at verifying or debunking urban legends, misinformation, and separating the true from the false. When it is unable to do so, it says so. It also cites its sources and explains its reasoning.

There is also much to be said for being aware of what’s what in our modern society and the various trends, fads and “movements” out there ranging from whacko fringe to fully legitimate. Beware of the fringe, whose literature and information is most deceptive and misleading, although frequently highly readable and seductive.

Myths live

It isn’t just the fringe that gets things wrong, though. All movements tend to have, and promote, certain myths or beliefs that are either not true or not totally in line with reality, and these take on a life of their own. The environmental movement provides a fine example: it is the commonly seen myth about a magnificent speech “Chief Seattle” allegedly gave in 1854 when he was considering selling what is now the land the City of Seattle sits on to the U.S. government. Environmentalists will quote this passionate speech about the sanctity of the land, air and water and the need to take good care of it. Others will just make passing reference to it (yes, it’s that well known).

Trouble is that it’s a fiction! But it is still widely published as fact, even by Al Gore in his book Earth In The Balance. It has been cited so often, it seems researchers and writers just assume it is true. It isn’t. Check it out at Snopes.com mentioned earlier.

The words were written in 1971 by Hollywood screenwriter Ted Perry for the 1972 film “Home,” a movie about ecology. And as Snopes.com notes, with citations, there are portions of the speech that are truly unlikely to ever have come from Chief Seattle. But people want to believe it because it suits their purpose so they’ve never actually checked it out. That’s a blunder. It makes one wonder how credible the rest of their “facts” actually are. And that’s a good reason to be a careful researcher yourself if you want to be taken seriously.

The last word

Here is John Adams, second president of the United States:

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.”

* Lex Talk! is researched and written by Times & Transcript editorial page editor Norbert Cunningham. It appears in this space every Monday.

Source: Times and Transcript, Canada
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/476094

Children are struggling at school because they don’t know if they are left or right-handed

The proportion of infants arriving at school not knowing whether they are right or left-handed has trebled in the past decade, researchers say. The situation has been made worse by excessive parental fears, driven by cot death, about letting them lie or crawl on their front.

“The most important thing parents can do is ensure that when they are being observed during the day, they are given a chance to be on their front.” Previous research by Portwood has found that 57% of three-year-olds are unable to carry out tasks expected at their age. She cited children’s inactive lifestyles as “a major contributory factor”.

Other experts have also raised concerns about children’s development. “Brain development is at its most rapid between the age of zero and three,” said Aric Sigman, a psychologist and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He pointed to research showing that for every hour a day a three-year-old watches television, there is a 9% rise in attention problems.

Sigman has described television as “the greatest unacknowledged public health issue of our time”. He also believes video games have led to children spending less time working with their hands and failing to grasp concepts such as weight, volume and measurement.

“By using your hands, you can actually become more civilised,” said Sigman. “These are problems likely to persist in life, they are rather indelible.”

The problem was highlighted at the Conservative party conference when a restaurateur told a session addressed by David Willetts, the shadow skills secretary, that she was unable to find British employees under 25 who had the dexterity to peel a potato.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5114484.ece

Kaoru Tomiishi sobbed as the body of her six-year-old son Koki was lowered into a small plot near the family home in Fukuoka. She told mourners she wanted to find and kill the murderer.

Three days earlier, on September 18, the 35-year-old housewife from Japan’s southern island had led a frantic search for the boy after telling police he had wandered off in a local park. Searchers found his body stuffed into a small gap in the wall of the park toilet. He had been strangled, most likely with the strap of a mobile phone.

In a depressingly familiar turn of events, investigators announced soon after the funeral that Kaoru had confessed to the “impulse” killing.

“I felt there was no hope for the future,” said the mother of one, who had reportedly become overwhelmed by her parental responsibility. “I thought about killing my son and also myself.”

Experts say the case is emblematic of a broader crisis. Recent statistics record more than 100 cases of maternal filicide — mothers murdering their children — since the end of 2005, including six in September this year. Although the proportion of Japanese aged 14 and younger has been steadily shrinking in the past decade, the number of filicides has stayed roughly constant.

“Women have become responsible not only for the full-time parenting and care of their children, but also their educational performance. The pressure is immense,” Professor Ohinata says. “That’s why, in recent cases of filicide, women haven’t just been killing infants but also schoolchildren, including teenagers.”

In an interview by AERA magazine, one psychiatrist said the killings could represent a kind of transference, whereby women were assigning the suppressed fury they felt at their neglectful husbands to their innocent children.

Evidence of the growing burden on mothers, Ohinata says, can be measured in another shocking statistic: reports of child abuse have jumped from 1101 in 1990 to more than 40,000 last year.

Criminologists say the breakdown of traditional family living arrangements, in which three or four generations of one family would live together in large suburban or rural houses, has cut young mothers off from family advice and support. Instead they rely on magazines and online parenting guides, which entrench anxieties that their children may have intellectual or physical disabilities.

Megumi Iwase, 33, earlier this year used a towel to strangle her three-month-old son Shuji before drinking a bleaching substance and slashing her wrists in a failed suicide attempt. The first-time mother had already resolved that his “development was slower than other children his age”.

In a recent court appearance, her 39-year-old husband admitted he had abandoned all parental duties to his wife and suggested he deserved to be jailed in her place.

Source: The Age, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/5n2vhl

A visiting international childhood expert says children should watch no television in the first two years of their lives.

The director of the Centre on Media and Child Health at the Harvard Medical School, Dr Michael Rich, says there is little benefit in putting a child under the age of two in front of a TV screen.

“There is no scientific evidence that children under the age of about 30 months, two-and-a-half years, can learn much of anything other than fairly rote imitation or mimicry from an electronic screen,” he told ABC radio’s The World Today program.

“What we know is that at least for national data from the United States that children under the age of two on average use electronic games for about an hour, a little over an hour a day,” he said.

“[We know] that 26 per cent of them have a television in their bedrooms and that it is very much integrated into their daily lives, largely in the format of parents using the television as an electronic babysitter.”

Dr Rich says TV screens do not provide the kind of stimuli most optimal for brain development.

“The best things are interaction with other human beings face to face, manipulating the physical environment, stacking up blocks, trying to get a raisin in your mouth and open-ended creative problem-solving sort of play,” he said.

“So a blank piece of paper and a crayon or a piece of clay to play with.”

Dr Rich says television and other media consumption should be restricted to about two hours a day for teenagers.

“It is really the school age years where kids start watching television on their own and actually teenagers, the data shows, use television less than school age kids,” he said.

“They start using more music and online media rather than television.

“But frankly there is no reason why young people, who have otherwise rich lives and homework to do and sleep to get, need to get more than an hour or two at most of media time each day.”

Source: ABC Online, Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/06/2412591.htm

Many parents don’t realize how easy and fun it can be to bring the family closer together while improving their children’s literacy skills.

“Spending time together and learning as a family can be a simple, inexpensive and easy activity. It just requires a little time, imagination and creativity,” said Sharon Darling, president and founder of the National Center for Family Literacy.

With this in mind, the center is offering some helpful tips for families to teach their children by using the world around them and maximizing time spent together:

1. Make science come alive at home by checking out science experiment books from the library and then trying simple experiments at home. For example, grow a vegetable with your child, chart the growth and talk about it.

2. Tie reading into an outing. If you’re going to a museum, bring home a book about dinosaurs, so they see reading as an experience.

3. Increase oral language skills by sharing stories of your childhood, suggest the experts at the center. You also can share stories about your child’s life, such as when they were born, their first Christmas, etc.

4. Use certain reading techniques that have been proven to increase effectiveness in reading time, including making sound effects to capture kids’ attention and changing your voice when different characters speak. You also should talk about the story to reinforce comprehension and memory skills, and read it again because repetition helps children recognize and remember words.

5. Teach math skills by letting your child count the money to pay at the store.

You will quickly be able to see the rewards of these activities, first-hand.

“As the father of three fantastic children, I so clearly and vividly recall many moments curled up with my children reading to them, at all times of day and night; on the kitchen floor, in their forts, on old sofas and beat up bean bags, in bed and in the car,” said David Murphy, president and CEO of Better World Books.

“Few moments in life can compare to the wonders of opening up the new world of language and communication, and wonder and awe to your child.”

Children also need good role models when it comes to literacy. According to the center, if kids don’t see parents reading for pleasure and for purpose, then they are less likely to view reading as a pleasurable experience.

For more recommendations from the center on literacy activities, visit www.famlit.org.

Source: Elmira Star-Gazette, NY
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20081105/LIFE06/811050304

Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their vegetables may need to take a hard look at their own eating habits, new research suggests.

The findings, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggest that even very young children do not indiscriminately reach for candy when given the chance. Instead, they seem to already be forming food preferences — potentially lasting ones — based on their parents’ shopping carts.

“The data suggest that children begin to assimilate and mimic their parents’ food choices at a very young age, even before they are able to fully appreciate the implications of these choices,” write the researchers, led by Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

That, the researchers say, means that the grocery store can be like a classroom, where parents teach their children that foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains take priority over snacks and desserts.

For the study, Sutherland’s team had 120 children aged 2 to 6 years old each take a turn in a play grocery store. The children were told they could buy anything they wanted out of 133 items: “healthier” foods included fruits, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, bread and milk; “less healthy” items included desserts, candy, potato chips, soda and sugary cereals.

Parents completed questionnaires on how often they bought specific foods and beverages. All said they brought their children with them on grocery store trips.

Most of the children, the researchers found, bought some sugary, salty treats; on average, their carts were filled with equal parts healthy and unhealthy items.

Giving preschoolers a taste for healthy foods, the researchers add, could ultimately make it easier for them to keep up a lifetime of smart eating.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A26J920081103