Mom News

As usual, I found myself perusing the Internet the other morning in an effort to put off my responsibilities...mainly paying bills (shudder) and doing laundry.  I'm actually caught up with grading, which is a holy miracle, but we'll see how long that lasts.

These articles struck my fancy, and I thought they may tickle yours as well: (Although, by now, a lot of this is old news.)

http://www.boston.com/community/moms/articles/2011/02/07/toddler_obesity_tied_to_introduction_of_solid_foods/?camp=obinsite

This first article discusses new research that links the early introduction of solid foods with lifelong obesity.   The author suggests that it's probably not the introduction of solids alone, but a variety of factors.  Sounds logical to me.  I really don't think you can blame childhood obesity on a single factor....there are a whole host of issues to blame here.   After all, I'm pretty sure my parents', generation were fed solids way earlier than the babies of today, so why are we fatter now as a society than we ever have been?  I also have the same question when the recent rise of allergies is linked with the early introduction of solid foods.  Why don't previous generations have similar rates of allergies when solids were introduced a lot earlier??  Still, what do I know?  I teach Shakespeare for a living, and I'm pretty sure Romeo and Juliet were neither obese nor allergic to peanuts.  

http://www.fastcompany.com/1733627/mit-scientist-captures-his-sons-first-90000-hours-on-video

This second article is a lot more fun.  A scientist from MIT videotaped his son constantly for five years in order to study how children acquire language.  THEN, he condensed the video footage into short clips so that you can see the evolution of his son learning words such as "ball" and "water." This guy is not a nerd at all.  It's pretty awesome.

I sooooo wish we could do experiments on Madeline.   For example, what if every time we spoke to her, we covered our eyes with our hands??  Or, what if we taught her that "yes" means no and "no" means yes??  Or, what if we introduced baby sign language...but with rude hand gestures instead of legitimate signs??  Poor Madeline.  She wouldn't understand why she had to sit in time out at daycare every time she asked for another bottle.