The following guest post is by Jean Hamburg, LICSW  who has just published Cooperation Counts! Life-Saving Strategies for Parenting Toddlers to Teens, an effective guidebook for parents, to defuse family conflicts and help children make responsible choices.

Jean earned her B.S. degree from Springfield College in Springfield, MA and her MSW degree from the University of Denver, Graduate School of Social Work, specializing in Child Welfare Services. Her experience has included clinical specialties in the areas of child abuse and neglect, family therapy, developing and implementing treatment plans for at risk adults and children, anger management, crisis intervention, and classroom management issues

The Tantrum

The kids in Ms.Tucker’s class had been excited for weeks. Timmy was having a birthday party at a favorite children’s restaurant.  Everyone was invited and everyone was coming.  This was way cool, especially since Todd was going with his friend and her mother!  The big day finally came and so did all of the kids, including Todd and his friend, Alissa.

Everything went smoothly until Todd’s Mom came to pick him up at the end of the party. Although everything had been picture perfect for two hours, as often happens, the last minutes did not go as hoped.  It was all because of a gumball machine that had been placed in a strategic location so that anyone near the exit could spot it clearly, and that’s what Todd did.  Not only did he spot it but he wanted a gumball really badly, and NOW!

In the blink of an eye, everything had changed.  When the answer was negative re: the longed for treat, all heck broke loose…A Tantrum: Todd was not exactly showing his best self.  Actually, he started screaming about the gumball and the screaming turned into SCREAMING!!

Unfortunately, to add to the chaos,  Mom’s car was parked in a no parking zone and Todd’s little brother Bobby was in it.  Mom could see Bobby (she was just inside the front door), and she definitely HEARD Todd.  So could everyone else.  This was the dreaded ‘big scene in public’ situation that every parent longs to avoid, but there it was.  What a nightmare!

Mom grabbed little Bobby from the car, left the emergency lights blinking, and hoped that her car would avoid being towed or ticketed.  Everyone was looking at the screaming Todd, who let everyone within hearing range know that he wanted a gumball, and he wanted it NOW.

Mom kept her cool.  She had been under this sort of pressure before.  She knew, and Todd knew, that she was not going to have a discussion under any such (tantrum) circumstances. 

As a matter of fact, all she said to Todd was, “Are you all set?  Are you all set to get into the car?”  Of course, he was not!  All Mom said was, “I see you’re not all set.  I’ll be chatting with Alissa’s Mom,” and she proceded to do so, removing her attention-briefly.  Todd kept screaming.  Within just a few seconds, she returned to Todd and kept to her script of “Are you all set?”, etc.  Todd was most certainly not all set, but Mom was not going to converse with anyone in wailing mode. She was not ignoring.  She was consciously disengaging.

In the meantime, the other parents had all sorts of advice for poor Mom.  She thanked them but kept to her script.  She also asked one of the parents to get the manager of the store in front of which she was parked, to request permission to leave her car where it was.

Soon, the other kids and their parents all left.  Mom, holding Bobby, hung around, continuing to use only the same script.

There was no gumball. There was no audience.  There was no discussion.  Finally, Todd gave a little nod, and the threesome got into the car.  The only thing that Mom said was, “I’m so glad you’re all set to get into the car.  Would you like the radio on?”  That was it.  Period.  There would be plenty of time to figure out the ‘issue’ at another time, but right now it was time to re-group, and that’s what they did.

There are no easy ways to handle a tantrum in public, or anywhere else, for that matter. This is only one way, but at the very least, Mom was being respectful and clear with Todd, while being  able to hold onto some adult  dignity, and that’s always a good thing.  There was another good thing.  The car had not been towed or ticketed, even though it had been left in an illegal location for quite a long time.

“Cooperation Counts! Life-Saving Strategies for Parenting Toddlers to Teens” is based on years of personal and professional experience.  The Cooperation Counts program offers useful tools to busy families who are looking for positive ways to get through the inevitable tough parenting times, minus yelling, punishments, bribes, begging and threats. The program is designed to help adults provide a respectful, predictable framework for discipline and praise. The chaos that results when a child decides to be uncooperative is dealt with calmly and effectively so that family stress is greatly reduced.

For more information about the book, program, and blog, visit: www.cooperationcounts.com

Jean can be contacted directly via email: jeanhamburg@comcast.net

Women’s health dot gov, a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health published an extensive article, on Dec 30th on a study of childhood obesity and the increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

What follows is a summary of the full article written by Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter.

A new study has found that the length of time a person carries excess weight directly contributes to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes.

Given that many of today’s young children are carrying a significant amount of excess weight from an early age, their chances of developing diabetes at some time in their lives is greater.

Dr. John E. Anderson, Vice President of Medicine and Science for the American Diabetes Association, said that research findings are pointing to what is now happening in our society, with more young children and teenagers diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than ever before.

“A disease that used to be confined to older people is creeping into high schools,” Anderson said. “At best, this is alarming. This obesity epidemic we have is fueling an epidemic of diabetes in young people.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 1980 obesity among children and adolescents has almost tripled.  Today, almost one in five American kids ages 2 to 19 are obese. That is about 12.5 million kids.

Researchers have found that the time spent carrying extra weight matters as much as the amount of extra weight.

“If you’re born in the year 2000 and the current trends continue unchecked, you will have a one in three chance of developing type 2 diabetes,” Anderson said. That risk increases for certain ethnic minorities, including African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics.

Diabetes is a systemic disease, and by its nature can affect almost every part of a person’s body. Someone with diabetes has a shorter life expectancy, and on any given day has twice the risk for dying as a person of similar age without diabetes, according to the CDC.

“We worry this will be the first generation of Americans who don’t live as long as their parents did,” Anderson said.

“What can be done to alter the potentially grim outlook? To start losing weight, kids need to adopt a set of healthy living skills that become part of their daily routine,” said Sheri Colberg-Ochs, an exercise science professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who works with the American Diabetes Association.

“It’s not just the weight, per se,” Colberg-Ochs said. “It’s the lifestyle they’ve developed that caused them to gain the extra weight.”

First, kids need to be taught to eat healthy foods and to avoid foods that are fatty, sugar-packed or heavily processed, she said.

“When food is a lot more refined, it’s lacking in a lot of vitamins and minerals that are essential to your effective metabolic function,” she said. “Kids eat empty calories, and those calories go straight to weight gain.

But they also need to become more physically active, she said. Exercise has been shown to both battle obesity and help better control blood glucose levels in the body.

“Those two things alone would probably solve the problem of childhood obesity, were society to pursue them vigorously,” Colberg-Ochs said.

(SOURCES: John E. Anderson, M.D., vice president, medicine and science, American Diabetes Association; Sheri Colberg-Ochs, Ph.D., professor, exercise science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va., and adjunct professor, internal medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, Va.)

The FDA has standards for sunlamp products. All sunlamp products must have:

Source: FDA Office of Women’s Health http://www.fda.gov/womens

The Environmental Working Group, suggests you take the following list with you when shopping for breakfast cereals.

EWG  is a private, not for profit organization that uses the power of public information to protect public health and the environment.

The 10 Worst Children’s Cereals-don’t meet nutrition guidelines:

Kellogg’s Honey Smacks

Post Golden Crisp

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallows

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch OPPS All Berries

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original

Quaker Oats Oh’s

Kellogg’s Smorz

Kellogg’s Apple Jacks

Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries

Kellogg’s Froot Loops Original

Best Cereals-are free of pesticides and genetically modified ingredients:

• Ambrosial Granola: Athenian Harvest Muesli
• Go Raw: Live Granola, Live Chocolate Granola, and Simple Granola
• Grandy Oats: Mainely Maple Granola, Cashew Raisin Granola, and Swiss Style Muesli
• Kaia Foods: Buckwheat Granola Dates & Spices and Buckwheat Granola Raisin Cinnamon
• Laughing Giraffe: Cranberry Orange Granola
• Lydia’s Organics: Apricot Sun, Berry Good, Grainless Apple, Sprouted Cinnamon, and Vanilla Crunch.
• Nature’s Path Organic: Optimum Banana Almond, Optimum Cranberry Ginger, Corn Puffs, Kamut Puffs, Millet Puffs, and Rice Puffs.

Good Cereals-easier to find but may include ingredients that are genetically modified or grown with pesticides:

• Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats: Unfrosted Bite- Size, Frosted Big Bite, Frosted Bite-Size, Frosted Little Bite
• General Mills Cheerios Original
• General Mills Kix Original
• Post Shredded Wheat (all varieties)
• Post Grape-Nuts Flakes
• Quaker Oats Oatmeal Squares Cinnamon
• Post Bran Flakes**
• Post Honey Bunches of Oats with Vanilla Bunches

Some cereals are better than others. When selecting cereals look for:

• Cereals with a short ingredient list (added vitamins and minerals are okay).
• Cereals high in fiber.
• Cereals with few or no added sugars, including honey, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, corn sweetener, sucrose, lactose, glucose, high- fructose corn syrup and malt syrup (USDA 2006a).

Cereals that meet these criteria can usually be found on the top shelves of the cereal aisle. They are harder to reach and not at eye level but often less expensive.

This year, look for more new educational vocabulary building matching games as well as more math games and more games courtesy of our friend across the pond.

You will find the new educational games in the club house. The educational games will continue to be under games. The new games from greyolltwit software are also in the club house. Just click on the balloon that says… more games.

We are now producing a series of new,short animated videos entitled, ” What Do the “Can Do” Kids Say About…?

The video content focuses on getting children to think about what they would do about such every day issues as sharing, eating right, being kind, telling the truth, helping a friend,  behaving appropriately in the classroom, and in the playground, personal hygiene, table manners and party manners, taking care of a pet, respecting others.

We will post a new video each month beginning in early spring.

So, stay tuned for more new programs, games and blogs!