Back-and-forth Car Seat Data

Slate weighs this new research:

Over an 18-month period in New Zealand, 43 babies had a “life-threatening event,” and nine of them stopped breathing while restrained in an infant semi-reclined car seat. Their little heads nodded forward, and, without much in the way of neck to stop them, pressed against their chests. This cut off their oxygen supply. The babies in the study didn’t die, but according to another study, other car seat sleepers apparently have.

Aganist this information:

 Crashes kill about 1,200 children a year under the age of 12 in the United States. According to a 2005 study based on the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, infant car seats reduced the chance of dying in a crash by 71 percent, and car seats for children ages 1 to 4 reduced the death rate by 54 percent.

Seat belts are pretty good at lowering the death rate, too; they cut it 47 percent for children under the age of 5.  In the New York Times Magazine last year, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Steven Dubner argued that this means child seat-belt laws “would likely do just as well—without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.” I wish they were right. But they’re not. Their article prompted a response by Dennis Durbin and Flaura Winston, doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and leading researchers in this field. Durbin and Winston tartly pointed out that car seats are a lot more effective at preventing injury in nonfatal crashes, of which there are 450,000 a year. According to Winston, for kids under the age of 6, car seats win out over seat belts at injury prevention by 30 percent to 40 percent.

And considers that:

A 2000 study found that 9,000 children who fell when their parents put the car seats down on tables or counters—because they weren’t buckled in or because the car seats tipped over—had to be treated in the emergency room.

Also note that the AAP recommends children remain in carseats until they reach 57 inches and 80 pounds, and the requirement in many states that children reach “8 (years) or 80 (pounds” before they stop using car seats.

Spanking Data

Spanking and economic data:

Professor Bruce Weinberg of Ohio State University has studied this. He found that if you’re a kid in a $6,000-a-year household, you probably get spanked every six weeks or so. If your parents’ annual income goes up to $17,000, you’ll get spanked about once every four months. As income rises above about $17,000, spanking falls off more slowly; $40,000 and $120,000 households are not much different from $17,000 households. That makes sense; in today’s America, you don’t have to be very wealthy before your kid has a Game Boy, so even a $20,000 household has good non-spanking alternatives.

For allowance withdrawal, the numbers go exactly the opposite way, Weinberg found. If you’re a kid in a typical $6,000-a-year family, you’ll almost never lose your allowance, but in a family that makes $17,000 or more, you’ll lose your allowance four or five times a year.

It might seem like a stretch to explain spanking with economics, but what else could account for these patterns? Well, there’s always culture. The very poor are disproportionately black, and blacks physically discipline their children more than whites do. But according to Weinberg, the effect of income persists even after you’ve controlled for race and other cultural variables.

Anyway, black parents punish their children more than white parents in all ways. If you’re black and you misbehave, you’re both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose your allowance than your white neighbor, who in turn is both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose his allowance than the Hispanic kid down the street. So on average, poor people spank more and withdraw allowances less, whereas black people spank more and withdraw allowances more. The income pattern fails to match the racial pattern, so the income pattern can’t be fully explained by race…

…There are other cultural factors: Boys are punished more than girls, with substantially more spankings and a bit more in the way of allowance withdrawals. Single mothers spank a little less, and withdraw allowances quite a bit less, than other parents. Older and better-educated parents are a bit less likely to spank and a bit more likely to withdraw allowances. Bigger families spank less and withdraw allowances more.

Children as Bilboards

Need a design idea for your homemade T-shirts?

Today’s UrbanBabyDaily e-mail rounded up some popular baby T-shirt sellers:

Nursery Rhyme Tease

IndyDink (“Mom” tattoo tees)

Ichabod’s Hand-Crafted Screen-printed designs

Havin’s Orginals Screen-printed designs

Fig Leaf Baby Catchy embroidered phrases

Ellie’s Party Small selection of catchy printed phrases

And more:

Peace Monkey Shiny, Happy T’s

Reckon Celebrity faces

Please Don’t Feed My Kid Sugar X-box-free, Sugar-free, etc. kid

Park Slope: How We Roll (Parody T-shirts)

Halo Kitty

John Deer kid’s clothing

Threadless kids (adults too, and way awesome)

R2D2 iron-on

Google snapsuit

Tie-dye snapsuits, fabric pants, and more at UrbanBabyRunway

And don’t forget Cafepress — endless inspration

(See the sidebar for black baby clothes, camo snapsuits, hand-sewn baby clothes, and Star Wars snapsuits)

SATees: Big Words for Little Kids

Modern Playroom

Wall Easel, $34.99

Paper Center by Guidecraft

Retail Price: $39.95

Old Fashioned Toy Chest for Children

Retail Price: $164.95

Book Display by Guidecraft

Retail Price: $129.95

Sand Blocks by Guidecraft, $30

Clear Sand & Water Table for Children – Free Shipping, $180

Martha Stewart sews pumpkin pillows

SVALA (at IKEA)

Children’s table & 2 chairs, $40 Fun ideas for walls  Alphabet Wall Frieze

IKEA PS SVINGA
hanging seat
$59.99

How To Teach Your Baby To Read, Part 2

The AAP recommends no TV for the under-2 set, but studies show that most of you will let your small children watch videos, regardless.

Here’s an idea: DVDs that actually teach small children to read (via the whole language approach). The Teach Your Baby website offers multi-level of DVD’s, flashcards, parent testimonials, and lots of videos of small children reading.

A demo video is also available on YouTube.

Extreme Parenting

The Atlantic covers the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex in an article called Extreme Parenting.

Full article below the jump.

Foreign Languages for Babies

Little Bitty Baby Learns Greek Board Book

and the companion title

Little Bitty Baby Learns Hebrew 

My First Spanish Word Board Book 

The Usborne First Thousand Words in Spanish 

And a host of other spanish-language books avaliable on Amazon.com

Amazon also sells Spanish-language games and toys , but the spanish baby section is limited to some bibs with spanish writing.

Foam alphabet floor tiles in Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese.

Wooden alphabet blocks in Hebrew, Spanish, German, and French. 

How To Teach Your Baby To Read, Part 1

Glenn Doman was the founder of The Institutes for The Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, PA, also called the Evan Thomas Institute or the Better Baby Institute.

Doman’s video introduction to his method is online: Part 1 (20 minutes) and Part 2 (24 minutes).

The Doman method uses flashcards (or, more recently, computer software), to teach reading and math via the “whole word” or “look-say” method to infants and toddlers. A parent summary of the steps Doman used to teach “encyclopedic knowledge” is here.

Medical criticism of Doman’s Instutites (hereafter known as IAHP) has largely been focused on IAHP’s treatment of “brain-injured children,” which comprises about 90% of their work. Their educational programs for well children (which are taught to parents via books, videos, and courses at IAHP, and designed to be used at home), has attracted fans including Linus Pauling, Shin’ichi Suzuki, and the Crown Prince of Japan. The Wikipedia article on IAHP covers some of the support and criticism IAHP has garnered.

Doman’s books include How Smart Is Your Baby, How To Teach Your Baby To Read, How to Teach Your Baby Math, How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedia Knowledge, and How to Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence, which includes most of the information in the previous three “how to” books. How to Teach Your Baby to be Physically Supurb and How to Teach Your Baby To Swim (by Glenn’s son, Doug Doman) stand alone. IAHP also recommends the Suzuki method of music education.

Courses at IAHP’s Philadelphia campus include:

A week-long course on How to Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence, which is heavy on demonstrations from tiny children who have used the method. This Boston Globe article says tuition for the course is $1,200.

A week-long How to Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence Graduate Course, offered just once a year, in May.

Creating hundreds of word flashcards and small posters (“bits of intelligence”) seems like the biggest obstacle to me.

An Amazon.com reviewer suggests making the math flashcards like this: A few words from my own experience on producing the inventory: don’t even imagine of cutting the cards or the points by yourself. Order the empty cards of the specified size in a nearby company, which prints business cards. Order five thousand 0.75-inch sticky red circles on a roll of ORACAL in a nearby company, which decorates the shop windows. The authors do not emphasize on ORACAL, but the process of putting the circles to the cards should be as easy as possible.

All of the IAHP books and various other products are for sale at the Gentle Revolution store: demonstration videos, flash card materials, informational posters, bits of intelligence, and CD-ROM picture dictionaries.

Baby Bottle Tooth Decay

The AAP recommends the following steps to avoid tooth decay from bottles (and sippy cups, which are basically glorified bottles):
Baby Bottle Tooth Decay (BBTD) is caused by prolonged contact with almost any liquid other than water. This can happen from putting her to bed with a bottle of formula, milk, juice, soft drinks, sugar water, sugared drinks, etc. Allowing her to suck on a bottle or breastfeed for longer than a mealtime, either when awake or asleep, can also cause BBTD. When liquid from a baby bottle builds up in the mouth, the natural or added sugars found in the liquid are changed to acid by germs in the mouth. This acid then starts to dissolve the teeth (mainly the upper front teeth), causing them to decay. Baby Bottle Tooth Decay can lead to severe damage to your child’s baby teeth and can also cause dental problems that affect her permanent teeth.

But there are steps you can take to prevent Baby Bottle Tooth Decay. Keep these pointers in mind as you care for your child’s teeth:

• Never put your child to bed with a bottle. By 7 or 8 months of age, most children no longer need feedings during the night. Children who drink bottles while lying down also may be more prone to getting ear infections.
• Only give your baby a bottle during meals. Do not use the bottle as a pacifier; do not allow your child to walk around with it or to drink it for extended periods. These practices not only may lead to BBTD, but children can suffer tooth injuries if they fall while sucking on a bottle.
• Teach your child to drink from a cup as soon as possible, usually by 1 year of age. Drinking from a cup does not cause the liquid to collect around the teeth, and a cup cannot be taken to bed. If you are concerned that a cup may be messier than a bottle, especially when you are away from home, use one that has a snap-on lid with a straw or a special valve to prevent spilling.
• Keep your baby’s mouth clean. This is an important part of preventing tooth decay. After feedings, gently brush your baby’s gums and any baby teeth with a soft infant toothbrush.
• Use water and a soft child-sized toothbrush for daily cleaning once your child has 7 to 8 teeth.

By the time your toddler is 2 years of age, you should be brushing his teeth once or twice a day, preferably after breakfast and before bedtime. Once you are sure your child will spit, and not swallow, toothpaste, you should begin using a fluoride toothpaste. Use a pea-sized amount of toothpaste to limit the amount he can accidently swallow.

The Top Ten Worst Cribs Ever

10: Country French Deluxe Crib

This reminds me of a wishing well you’d find at a 1980’s bridal shower. Don’t miss the 10-inch bunnies perched on top of the canopy.

 

9. Classic Convertible Crib

Dude, there’s nothing classic about a siren-red crib. It also comes in a brilliant lilac.

 

8. Hey Diddle Diddle Iron Canopy Crib $2,180

 

Iron seems like a bad choice for a crib, but the huge cut-out cows on this thing are seriously ridiculous.

 

7. Tee Time Crib and Linens

Two-tone crib with big blue bows, pink ruffled skirt, a nameplate, and a duck and frog playing golf.

 

6. DucDuc Alex Crib

I love ducduc, and this design frankly rocks. But IMHO, colors like fuchsia and slogans like “this end up” and “fragile” are better suited to a $15 T-shirt – not a $945 crib.

 

5. Galeanon Poggi BabyBox Apparently not for sale at any price, which is a good thing.

Are you supposed to find different-sized crib mattresses and sheets for each stage of this adjusting crib, including the “square” stage? Good luck.

 

4. Guinevere’s crib and linens $2,900

I didn’t know it was possible to pack this much pink frou frou and tole painting onto a crib. The manufacturer says “you can personalize this unique crib with your child’s name or a favorite phrase.” How about a little Langston Hughes: “Money and art/Are far apart.”

 

3. Cassandra baby crib Price: $3,800

An aluminum(?) and leather-padded baby crib, in orange, kiwi, red-and-white stripes, or your choice of 16 other colors. For future tripped-out Escalade drivers, I guess.

 

2. Fantasy Coach $47,000

Is this what you graduate to when you’ve outgrown Guinevere’s crib?

 

1. Atelier Van Leishouts Bad Crib

When Ferberizing goes too far: black metal bars on all six sides, plus a padlock. CIO, baby!