A Victory for Child Safety
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● August 6, 2010
Karen Joy Miller of Huntington, a breast cancer survivor, and Laura Weinberg of Great Neck, have been campaigning for more than a decade to ban chemicals they believe are linked to breast cancer. Their main target has been bisphenol-A or BPA, a chemical used to manufacture plastics, including baby bottles, sippy cups and pacifiers. Studies have linked BPA to various forms of cancer in adults and developmental issues in children. And while the US Food and Drug Administration has not concluded the cause and effect, they are conducting studies to see how BPA may impact the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and young children.
For now, Miller and Weinberg’s efforts have led to legislation in New York. Last week Gov. David A. Paterson signed the BPA-Free Children and Babies Act into law, banning the sale of children’s products laced with the compound. That makes NY one of 9 states to bar sales of any product that contains BPA and is aimed at children. That’s good news for parents and others who care for children. But it still means you have to check to be sure the products you or your child care provider use are BPA-free.
Free Summer Lunches
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● July 6, 2010
Over 70,000 children on Long Island rely on school lunch programs. So what happens to them now that school is closed? Island Harvest, Long Island’s largest hunger relief organization, is now providing supplemental meals through the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) to children who would ordinarily rely on free or reduced breakfast, lunch and snacks during the school year and may not have adequate meals when school is out of session. The SFSP provides free supplemental meals or snacks to children 18 years old and younger. For more information, call Bob King at Island Harvest, 516-294-8528, Ext. 126.
Below are Island Harvest sponsored SFSP Sites on Long Island:
- Woodward Children’s Center, 201 W. Merrick Rd, Freeport
- Harvest for the World, 90 Pleasant Avc, Roosevelt
- Littig House, 72 Harbor Homes, Port Washington
- Westbury Recreation Center, 348 Post Ave, Westbury
- Penates, 1360 Fifth Ave, Bay Shore
- Clara H. Carlson School, 235 Belmont Blvd, Elmont
- South Salem Elementary School, 10 Newbury Rd, Port Washington
- Central Islip Recreation Center, 555 Clayton St, Central Islip
- Victory Church of God, 1343 Montauk Hwy, East Patchogue
- Robert M. Finley Middle School, Forest Ave, Glen Cove
No More Pool Drownings
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● June 24, 2010
Every summer we see the tragic stories in the paper about accidental drownings. Nearly always they involve children who were unsupervised for just a moment. Other times it’s older kids who no one expects could drown. I think of the heartbreak those families experience from something that is so very avoidable. Please, anyone who has a pool, take the moment to lock the pool gate. There are so many inexpensive products out there like locks and pool alarms. Buy them now. If your child is anywhere near the pool, don’t run to answer the phone or the door. It’s not worth it. Lock the doors indoors if you have to walk away from your young child inside for a moment so they can’t wander outside to climb the steps to the pool. If you have an older child who doesn’t know how to swim, take advantage of town swimming lessons. Have a rule that no one, no matter what age, is allowed in your pool if no adult is present. Enforce it. If your child doesn’t follow that rule, follow through on a consequence. Don’t assume that your child’s friends can swim. When you were a kid, surrounded by your peers, would you have admitted if you couldn’t swim, subjecting yourself to ridicule? Better is to call the parents to make sure it’s okay with them that their child swims in your pool. If you allow your child to go to the beach with another adult, be sure it’s a beach that has a lifeguard. Talk to that adult about how they will supervise your child. And because you can just never know, talk to your child about how to be safe at the beach. Can you prevent every accident that can befall your child? No. But there are some things that are so logical, so simple to do, that no parent should ever have to live their life with the pain of not having done so. And if you need more advice, the American Red Cross and the American Academy of Pediatrics have safety lists for you on their Web sites. There is no shortage of information about how to keep children safe. Just, perhaps, a shortage of time. Don’t let that stop you.
Baby Name Regrets
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● June 15, 2010
I have a simple first name, Liza, pronounced Leeza, with a “z”. You’d think that four little letters couldn’t cause a lifetime of daily explanation, but they do. Every day I am alternately Liza (as in lye-za), Lisa, Liva, Leda or anything else someone manages to “hear” when I say my first name. In grade school, after trying to teach the teacher how to pronounce my name each September, I would eventually give up and succumb to being called whatever the teacher decided I would be that year. So I spent an entire year as Lisa; another as Lye-za. Just last week the WLIW documentary Hometown Huntington called me Lye-za twice, much to the anger of many, many people who know me. (It was surprisingly sweet to have others incensed on my behalf.)
So when I saw the short article in Newsday today, “Baby Names Can Spell Regret, Research Finds,” I wasn’t surprised to learn that studies show the name on your birth certificate can traumatize a child all the way to adulthood. And that one in five parents later wished they had chosen a different name for their child. My own mother has said on more than one occasion she wishes she had called me Elizabeth, a family name. But while that would have perhaps made my life simpler, at least when it comes to my first name, I can’t say I’ve been traumatized. Annoyed, yes. Angry at the boss’s daughter who long ago who told me that I mispronounce my name. But mostly, just resigned. Truth is, I like my name and the fact that it’s unique. When pronounced correctly, it’s actually pretty, if I do say so myself. Besides, it could always be worse. I’m eternally grateful that my parents weren’t fond of the name Moon Unit.
Do you have any name stories to share? Any regrets about your child’s name? Let me know.
Glee-less Audience Behavior
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● May 31, 2010
I took my girls to see Glee Live at Radio City Music Hall this weekend. The show was fantastic. But the audience, especially for the warm-up act, was horrendous. Getting up from their seats to move around and chat with friends, coming and going as though they were walking the supermarket aisles, chatting, texting, in general annoying me and my family who felt that if you pay good money to have seats in a theater, it’s a wise idea to actually use those seats. Doesn’t anyone know there’s audience etiquette? That if you can see the performers on stage, they can see you? That not only are you being annoying to the people around you when you stand up and block their view of the stage, you’re also being disrespectful to the performers? I wonder if audience members today are so used to sitting in front of a screen for their entertainment–the TV, computer, etc.–that they don’t realize that there is such a thing as real-time. There can be no other explanation for the teenagers who climbed over their seats like they were jumping on their home sofa or the parents who stood in the aisle blocking the view for three rows of audience members. I hate to sound all “in my day” but my oldest is an usher at her college, and she complained about audience behavior too. She’s also a performer, so she sees both sides. And she says there’s nothing more deflating than having prepared to sing a solo and putting your heart and soul into it and looking out at the audience to see the reflection of someone’s laptop shining on their face. So do us all a favor, if you’d rather get your entertainment from a screen, why not just stay home?
New Moms Are Older, Better Educated
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● May 6, 2010
According to a new study on the state of American motherhood by the Pew Research Center, new mothers are increasingly older and better educated than they were 20 years ago. Nearly 14 percent of mothers were 35 and older two years ago. The good news is that only 10 percent of new mothers were teens, down from 13 percent in 1990. The study also found that a record 41 percent of births were to unmarried women in 2008. That’s an increase of 28 percent from 1990. If you’re into statistics, check out the study, “The New Demography of American Motherhood” at http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/754/new-demography-of-american-motherhood
There’s a lot to examine here. But for now I’ll say, did anyone ask any moms in the study how tired they are?
Is Parenting More Challenging in 2010?
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● April 30, 2010
I’ll be speaking about this topic Sunday, but it’s one that many parents ask me about. Though we don’t need experts to tell us so, they all concur: Yes. Technology alone makes it difficult for parents to both control their children’s exposure to what’s going on in the wider world (earthquakes, terrorism, plane crashes), and also to know what impact that has on them. Our children are more stressed than those in previous generations as a result of all this media access. At the same time, we’re all worried about the economy. Even something as simple as buying a tomato at the supermarket can be fraught with anxiety as we increasingly hear about tainted foods. Our anxiety can feed our children’s anxiety. And so it goes. I’ll be writing more about this in Long Island Parent magazine soon. But for now, I’d like to hear what you think about this question: Is parenting more challenging for you in 2010 than it has been before?
What’s Your Child Doing on the Computer?
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● March 31, 2010
Most of us experienced it during our school years–some may still experience it at work–the sometimes subtle, often outright and always upsetting forms of bullying. Schools across the country, including here on Long Island, have instituted anti-bullying awareness/prevention programs. And our grade school children dutifully follow the lessons, get their prizes and I’m sure for a long time are heartfelt in their belief that they will never bully because that’s just plain mean.
But some of them do wind up bullying. And some of them wind up being the victims. Still others will stand by silently because the lessons learned while young usually are just too challenging to put into practice when you’re in a school lockerroom, or bus, or hallway, and someone decides that another student, for reasons no one can ever be clear about later on, is worthy of name calling or worse. And in the last several days we adults have learned how serious the outcome can be when kids use their newest method to bully: in the privacy of the victim’s own bedroom via her computer.
Cyberbullying, the practice of using the Internet to taunt and hurt the person at the other end of the computer, isn’t a new problem. Experts have been warning parents for a few years now, and I’ve certainly written about it before. We’ve heard many cases in the news of cyberbullying gone too far. But the case of the Long Island teen who committed suicide two weeks ago after she had received anonymous, cruel comments through the new Web site formspring.me, shows how little we parents really know about what our kids are exposed to. Our sons and daughters are far more savvy than we are when it comes to the latest technology. And in fact it is through their quick-moving notification system that these sites become instantly popular. But they’re not savvy when it comes to the psychology of what they’re doing. And unless we parents touch base with them to ask them what’s new in the computer world–a subtle way to begin the dialogue about what they might be exposed to–we may never know what they’re doing until it’s too late.
I asked my 16-year-old if she knew about formspring.me, something anyone who uses Facebook was notified about. She said she had checked it out and decided it was “stupid” because anyone could say what they wanted, and multiple times, so that one anonymous person could pretend to be 50 different people leaving 50 different cruel messages. I was relieved by her practicality. But I honestly wouldn’t have even thought to ask if I hadn’t read the Newsday article about the local teen.
And have you parents heard about chat roulette? It’s a Web site that lets you use your Webcam to chat with whomever happens to come in front of your computer screen. Another teen I know told me that it gets creepy when you do it at night because some people use it sexually. Wow, the many ways creepy adults find to prey on kids.
The bottom line is that there’s a lot going on during our children’s computer time, some they happen upon accidentally, some they unwittingly become involved with, and some they actively engage in. Not all of it is problematic, of course. But the important question to consider is: Will you know when it does become a problem? And do you have a system in place now, today, to help your child navigate the Internet safely? No one should ever feel they need to kill themselves in order to escape the pain of bullying. But sometimes a young person sees no way out. At the very least, we need to be there for them so they know that we can help them.
Baby Sling Warnings
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● March 10, 2010
Apparently now even baby slings, designed to cuddle infants close while you try to have your hands free to multi-task, have become dangerous. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is issuing a warning that infants can suffocate. Slings have been linked to at least seven deaths. I’d love to hear from moms who practice “baby wearing” to know what you think of this.
Camp Fun Fest: A Chance to Meet Camp Directors
Posted by: Liza N. Burby in: ● February 17, 2010
I know it seems that summer camp is far away, but now is the time to start registering to be sure you get your child the camp experience you want for them. That’s why we’ve brought together camp directors and other summer program leaders in one place for you on Saturday, Feb. 20 at the Broadway Mall in Hicksville from 11 to 4. Our free Camp Fun Fest also features a bounce, Wii, jump rope and much more. So come in out of the cold, start dreaming of summer, and take this chance to ask camp directors what you want to know about their programs. Please call 631-673-4082 with any questions.