The more moms work, the heavier their kids get, says study

Fri, Feb 4, 2011 (HealthDay News) — As if working mothers don’t have enough to feel guilty about, a new study suggests that the more time they spend working, the heavier their children become.

Researchers at American University, Cornell University and the University of Chicago analyzed data on 900 school-aged children, and found that the cumulative time that a child’s mother worked was associated with a small but measurable increase in the child’s body mass index (BMI), a measurement that takes into account height and weight.

The research, which was sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), appears in the January/February issue of the journal Child Development.

“It’s important to emphasize that it seems to be the environmental factors associated with the total time that moms work, and not maternal employment per se, that contributes to an increase in children’s BMI,” said study author Taryn W. Morrissey, an assistant professor of public administration and policy at American University.

Surprisingly, there was no evidence that the increase in BMI was linked to more TV viewing, a decrease in physical activity, or more time spent unsupervised.

The researchers concluded that it may be changes in children’s eating and sleeping patterns (factors that were not included in the data) that account for the BMI changes. “While we weren’t able to identify any specific environmental factors, it’s clear from other research that nutrition and sleep are important,” she said. “So, one possible policy implication is to do more to help working parents find quick and easy ways to prepare healthy foods.”

Morrissey and her colleagues analyzed data from the NICHD’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which began in 1991 and involved roughly 1,300 newborns in 10 cities across the country. For this study, they examined data on 900 children that was compiled from telephone and in-person interviews conducted in third, fifth and sixth grades. In addition, they looked at the mothers’ employment status and schedule beginning from when their children were 3 months old.

“For a third grader of average height, the increase in BMI was equivalent to an extra one and a half to two pounds over what that child would normally gain in a year,” Morrissey said.

The effect was even greater among children in fifth and sixth grades. “It is possible that because fifth and sixth graders generally have more independence and less adult supervision over their time use and food choices than third graders, maternal employment precipitates poorer food choices and more sedentary activity,” the authors wrote.

Alison E. Field, an obesity researcher and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said the study highlights the challenges that all working parents face as they juggle the demands of work and family responsibilities, and that one consequence may be relying too heavily on high-calorie, processed foods.

But, she added, the researchers’ main findings “should be taken with a grain of salt.”

“For one thing, we don’t know why these mothers were going in and out of the workforce,” Field said. “Some women choose to go back to work and others have to because they need the income. The reason the mothers are working can have a very different impact on how their families are eating, and that kind of gets glossed over in this study.”

Another limitation of the paper, Field noted, is that because the children were studied around the time of puberty, it’s possible that other developmental factors may have accounted for changes in BMI.

Nevertheless, Field agreed that a key take-home message for working parents is that they “need to think twice about feeding their families a lot of processed, pre-packaged foods.”

The study didn’t investigate what role the fathers’ work played in their children’s physical health, which Morrissey said wasn’t particularly surprising.

“The data set we analyzed was from the early 1990s, and a study that starts today might have different employment patterns for fathers,” she said. “On the other hand, even though dads today are participating a lot more in things like child care, cleaning and cooking, it seems that working moms still bear the brunt of family responsibilities.”
– Madonna Behen

Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

 

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“How to Raise Boys Who Read” from WSJ

This article was published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal….  I like it for several reasons…..

How to Raise Boys Who Read

Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes.

By THOMAS SPENCE

When I was a young boy, America’s elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can’t read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Everyone agrees that if boys don’t read well, it’s because they don’t read enough. But why don’t they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the “stuffy” literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must “meet them where they are”—that is, pander to boys’ untutored tastes.

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means “books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor.” AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to “grossology” parties. “Just get ‘em reading,” she counsels cheerily. “Worry about what they’re reading later.”

There certainly is no shortage of publishers ready to meet boys where they are. Scholastic has profitably catered to the gross-out market for years with its “Goosebumps” and “Captain Underpants” series. Its latest bestsellers are the “Butt Books,” a series that began with “The Day My Butt Went Psycho.”

The more venerable houses are just as willing to aim low. Penguin, which once used the slogan, “the library of every educated person,” has its own “Gross Out” line for boys, including such new classics as “Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.”

Workman Publishing made its name telling women “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” How many of them expected they’d be buying “Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty” a few years later from the same publisher? Even a self-published author like Raymond Bean—nom de plume of the fourth-grade teacher who wrote “SweetFarts”—can make it big in this genre. His flatulence-themed opus hit no. 3 in children’s humor on Amazon. The sequel debuts this fall.

Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised “so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education.”

“Plato before him,” writes C. S. Lewis, “had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful.”

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are.

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.

The other problem is that pandering doesn’t address the real reason boys won’t read. My own experience with six sons is that even the squirmiest boy does not require lurid or vulgar material to sustain his interest in a book.

So why won’t boys read? The AP story drops a clue when it describes the efforts of one frustrated couple with their 13-year-old unlettered son: “They’ve tried bribing him with new video games.” Good grief.

The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time “plugged in” than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys’ attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

Dr. Robert Weis, a psychology professor at Denison University, confirmed this suspicion in a randomized controlled trial of the effect of video games on academic ability. Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn’t it, but Science has spoken.

The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

People who think that a book—even R.L. Stine’s grossest masterpiece—can compete with the powerful stimulation of an electronic screen are kidding themselves. But on the level playing field of a quiet den or bedroom, a good book like “Treasure Island” will hold a boy’s attention quite as well as “Zombie Butts from Uranus.” Who knows—a boy deprived of electronic stimulation might even become desperate enough to read Jane Austen.

Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter’s husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?

I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

Mr. Spence is president of Spence Publishing Company in Dallas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405511702112290.html?KEYWORDS=video+games+reading

Education…

Education…

The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners.  Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations.  To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.

- Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

The 5 C’s of Discipline

Catholic Heritage Curricula (www.chcweb.com) is such a wonderful resource for Catholic Homeschooling families! I have bought so many of their products, and their “Little Folks” series remains one of our favorites.

Recently, CHC sent out this pithy but excellent instruction on good child discipline. I loved it and decided to post it (below):

 
Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
                          —Prov. 22:6

One repeated plea from our last survey concerned discipline.  Since it is almost impossible to homeschool in the absence of discipline, we offer ‘The Five C’s to a Happy Home.’

The first step in effective discipline is verbal correction.   When an undesired behavior is first addressed, point out what the child did wrong, why it’s wrong, and an alternative, positive behavior.  “We don’t hit the kitty; instead, we pet him, like this.”  Now the child knows what behavior is not acceptable, and what is.  

The second step in effective discipline is that it is conversation-free.   There is often a temptation to think, ‘well, maybe he didn’t understand the first time I told him not to hit the kitty, so I should explain again.’  Discussing the issue again invites the child to talk back, and can develop into a power struggle.  Limit talk to a single, brief statement—’Remember, we don’t hit the kitty’– as you lead the child to time-out; do not respond to any outburst from the child.  Words alone are not discipline; they are just words. 

The third step in effective discipline is consequences.  Time-out can be an effective consequence if it is used consistently.  Another excellent consequence is to remove the child from the scene.  [He has to get down from the table and wait to resume eating until he is in control of himself and everyone else is done.]  If the behavior centers around a toy or an object, the toy or object can be taken away for 24 hours.

The fourth step in effective discipline is consistency.  A child who has been disciplined inconsistently usually ignores correction, because he knows that he can get away with the behavior several times before anything happens.  This is reward enough to keep the bad behavior alive.  In contrast, a child who burns himself on a hot wood stove will not touch the stove a second time, for he realizes that the stove will consistently burn him each and every time he touches it.  If a child has been disciplined inconsistently, he may test vigorously when a firm plan of discipline is put into place.  But, if correction and consequences follow each time, the behavior will die out.  Each time he hits the kitty, he goes to time out. 

The final step in effective discipline is ‘catching the good.”   It is of paramount importance to be observant, catch the child doing the good behavior, and praise him for the improvement.  “See how nicely you have learned to pet the kitty.  Good job.”   Praise stresses the correct behavior, demonstrates to the child that he can do it, and warms little hearts.

If undisciplined children are ‘running the household,’ you may wish to drop school for a week and focus on the Five C’s.  Pray for wisdom and the graces that Our Lord promises to all parents, then identify the worst behaviors and address those first.  Announce to the children what will be expected from now on, and begin taking those five steps to reclaim your happy home.

We keep all of you in our prayers and regularly have Holy Mass offered for your intentions. We truly appreciate your prayers for the CHC apostolate, also!

In Their Hearts,

Theresa Johnson
www.chcweb.com

Motivating kids to do extra schoolwork

My kids love to do extra schoolwork.  Seriously.  My second-grade son has completed more than 200 extra pages of schoolwork in the past three months.  I stole my system from Kimberly Hahn’s talk called The ABC’s of Catholic Homeschooling.

Kimberly Hahn has a technique she calls “Marbles in a Jar.”  The Hahn children must do their daily schoolwork.  They do not get rewarded for what they are required to do.  However, if the children choose to do any extra schoolwork, they earn a marble in their jar.  Then, the kids can use the marble to buy things. 

I implemented this system about three months ago, and I can’t believe how well it is working.  In fact, I find my children doing their math homework before I even get out of bed in the morning.  They love earning marbles.

What can they buy with the marbles?  Kimberly Hahn suggests treats, outings, toys, or anything else that they might enjoy.  In our house, the marbles earn movies.  My children watch very little television.  In fact, they don’t watch any television unless it is educational, and even that is strictly limited.  So, for 25 marbles, my children can watch a movie any day of the week (provided that their schoolwork is already completed for the day.)

My second grader has an excellent attention span, and will work for hours earning marbles.  My kindergartener is only 5 years old, and doesn’t earn as many marbles.  She just doesn’t have the attention span.  However, if she knows that her brother is going to watch a movie, she suddenly becomes motivated to earn marbles so that she can watch a movie too!

I give my kids different colored marbles:  The Naturalist gets blue marbles, and The Dancer gets red.  I use an old bag of marbles I’ve had since I was a kid.  The Naturalist gets a big kick out of earning all of the blue marbles, and then I tell him he can have any color except red.  I purposely give them different color marbles because I don’t want to worry about someone stealing marbles when I’m not looking.  I keep the marbles on the kitchen countertop so that they are visible at all times (seeing the marbles reminds the kids to work for marbles). 

Kimberly Hahn mentions that she often uses up an entire year’s worth of schoolwork by February, and she has the “problem” of having to buy the next year’s materials early because her kids finished an entire years’ worth of schoolwork in six months.  I’ve noticed the same “problem” myself:  The Naturalist just finished his second grade math book this week, and I need to get him more math.

One thing that makes this system work great:  My kids have workbooks and lessons they can do on their own.  If their extra schoolwork required my time, they’d never get any work done.  My kids use Math U See, which is the best math program I’ve seen.  All I do is grade their work:  The kids pop in the DVD, watch a math lesson (which is anywhere from 2 to 8 minutes long), and then they complete the workbook pages on their own.  All I have to do is grade their work. 

I think this system would also work well for any kid in a public or private school who needs to do some additional work at home.  For example, my friend Kathy is worried about the math her son is learning at his school.  She feels that he’s not getting enough math at school, and she bought some materials so that he could work on math at home.  Marbles in a jar is a great way to motivate all kids, homeschooling or not.

 One final thought:  If a

reward is going to motivate,  it has to be salient.  Or put more simply, a kid has to see something in order to want it.  If I want to motivate The Dancer to catch up to her brother, all I have to do is leave a DVD laying around.  She will see the movie case and want to watch the movie.  I never say anything. 

When your three year old stops napping

My friend Amy from Wisconsin asks, “What do you do when your three year old gives up their nap, even though they still need it (and Mom needs it too!)?”

With both the Naturalist and the Dancer, I used books on CD. (Our local public library has a fabulous collection).  They both loved them and it has greatly improved their vocabulary.  Here’s how to do it:

First, stop calling it “nap time”.  Call it “quiet time.”  Nap time makes it clear what you expect from them (a nap) and they will fight it.  Quiet time is less threatening.

Second, make sure the bedroom is free from items that might lead to mischief.  The Dancer’s room has nothing in it besides the Little People, a bed and a dresser.  And she knows that the Little People are gone if I catch her playing with them when she should be sleeping.

Third, pick the right book on CD.  With a three year old, make sure you start with a short book (30 mins.). That may not seem like much, but remember that a short break is better than no break at all.  Eventually, the child can work their way up to longer books.  For example, The Dancer can now enjoy books as long as one hour, and The Naturalist (at age 5+), listens to books over an hour in length. 

A great book on CD for a three year old is Frog and Toad.  Frog and Toad is a two disc collection, each CD is only 45 mins (two books on each CD).  Another short one is Winnie the Pooh by Milne.  Each CD is also about 45 mins.  Our library also owns a two-disc Dr. Suess collection, (the first disc has most of the popular books, we didn’t like the second CD as much). 

Also, my kids are big into Spanish CDs.  Beth Manners has three fabulous CD’s that are each about 30 minutes in length, and includes a nice story and music too.    Look on this blog for more suggestions of great books on CD, or make your own tape if you can’t find something you like. 

When the kids are really tired, they will fall asleep listening to the CDs.  When they don’t need a nap, then they will lay peacefully and enjoy the story.  If you catch them getting out of bed and being naughty, then they lose the privilege of the CD (in which case, I turn on the noisemaker and they are told to take a nap).   Another privilege we have in the house is dessert.  If any child has a bad day (which would include being naughty during quiet time), they get no dessert.  Dessert is a great motivator to most children!

Once the child gets older and no longer needs a nap, then you can change the rules for quiet time.  The Naturalist is no longer required to lie down in bed during quiet time.  Now he colors, does puzzles, makes trains, legos, etc… in his room quietly while listening to his CD’s, and he just loves the down time.  I don’t know how many times he’s asked me, “Is it time for quiet time yet?”

 

Try this for a couple of weeks.  I’ve noticed that nothing I’ve tried has worked if implemented less than two weeks.  After two weeks, things start to fall into place. 

 

Books on CD will not only solve the nap time dilemma, but it will also improve your child’s vocabulary.    In fact, people regularly comment about our children’s amazing vocabulary.  Books on CD are also nice because kids’ imaginations need lots of stories, and they need to be read to constantly, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to give them all that reading!