After some discussion among the contributors here, we’ve decided to merge forces with the rational Dads at Science Based Parenting!  Please visit us there in the future.

A little history and an explanation are in order.

Jessie and I started Rational Moms in October, 2008.  We knew we’d need more contributors to keep it going, so we put the word out.  Phil Plait was kind enough to help, and we received many emails from interested moms.  We picked a few and got going, and we’ve been lucky to have a great mix of contributors.  Recently, however, we’ve slowed down in terms of posting regular content.  I know for myself, this has involved a mix of extra family obligations due to illnesses of the elder folks and also wanting to get back to dramatic writing, which is ostensibly what I went to film school to do.  Oh, and being a parent didn’t make it any easier to get back to posting frequently.

Our male counterparts over at Science Based Parenting have been closely connected to us all along.  We have often been in contact, read each other’s posts, and our very own Laurie Tarr is part of SBP’s podcast, Parenting Beyond Belief.  We also both have had the good fortune to lean on sources from SBP’s name inspiration, Science Based Medicine.  With all of us working together, we can bring all our readers into one place, post more regularly, and unify all that testosterone and estrogen into one big rational gender balanced family of bloggy goodness.

We’re stronger together than apart.  So we want to take our readers along to our new home, where you’ll continue to see our posts, along with the writings of the fab dads who have been posting at SBP.  Rational Moms will still be here for a while, with all our old posts, but we might migrate old content over to Science Based Parenting in the future.

The award-winning children’s songwriter Monty Harper is working on a new project which will use catchy, fun songs to help teach kids about science. It is an album called Songs from the Science Frontier, and is unique in that all the songs are based on real scientists, and their research. Monty hosts monthly science cafe-type gatherings, and he invites these scientists to talk about their current projects to an audience of kids.  Monty has written a song about each of these scientists, many of whom are women by the way, and now he’s ready to make an album of the songs.

Monty and a camper at Camp Inquiry '09

Let me tell you a story about one of Monty’s songs. » Continue reading “Songs from the Science Frontier”

I’m somewhat late in posting a link to a new blog called The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.  Recently Shannon Des Roches Rosa, the editor of this blog and book project contacted us with this to say:

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the book and website we wish had been available when our children with autism were first diagnosed.

Autism misinformation clouds and is perpetuated by the Internet. We want to make accurate information about autism causation and therapies visible, accessible, and centralized.

Think of us as a little bit of Snopes for the autism community — trusted, accurate, and friendly.  Our essays will cover informed approaches to autism and autism treatments, as well as the personal experiences of people with autism and their families.

I’m adding them to the blog roll (the badly in need of updating blog roll, yeah, that one).  While I was perusing the site, one personal post by Devon Koren Asdell caught my eye.  She writes that she is positive vaccines did not cause her own child’s autism:

For some reason (I’m assuming due to the controversial and heated nature of the discussion), many people, upon learning that Aisling is autistic, ask me if I believe her early childhood vaccinations caused the condition. My answer to this is always, emphatically, “no.” Aisling did receive all of her vaccinations on time, and would occasionally become slightly feverish and irritable after those first few sets, but I personally never saw any evidence that Aisling regressed in development, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary compared to the little checklist of probable side-effects that the health department sent home with us.

Not wanting to offend anyone who might believe otherwise, Asdell offers this disclaimer:

I’m not about to try to “prove” or “disprove” that childhood vaccinations cause autism in children. What I am absolutely certain of, however, is that childhood vaccinations did not cause autism in my own child.

The accounts of her memories of her baby being “different” are poignant:

Once I knew what the symptoms were, I was able to backtrack through Aisling’s life and see evidence of the disorder everywhere. I could remember how difficult it was to get her to breastfeed when she was a small baby, because she seemed to dislike being snuggled up to me. I remembered how I’d heard all these stories about how breastfeeding brought you closer to your child, because they’d make eye-contact with you, interact with you, “bond” with you during those early moments. I remembered feeling like I must have been doing something wrong, or that she simply wasn’t interested in me, because she would actively avoid eye contact with me when I was breastfeeding her, and would only eat when she was very, very hungry or when she wanted to go to sleep. I remember feeling as if I was just a “food machine” a lot of the time — Aisling really only seemed interested in interacting with me when she wanted something and couldn’t get it.

While Asdell is very, very careful not to step on the toes of anyone reading her personal account, she does offer this at the end of her post:

Autism didn’t “happen” to her; autism is very much a part of who she is, who she’s always been. I feel she’s imperfectly perfect just as she is, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

This is a sentiment I’ve come across a few times, that considering a child “different” rather than “damaged” is actually much better for the parent and empowering for the child.  While Asdell herself would not come out and say this, viewing these kids as damaged probably has severe negative impacts on parents’ emotional states, in addition to lowering vaccination rates.

One of my very favorite museums, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, is having a very cool contest. One person will be chosen to live inside the museum for one month.

We’re looking for someone to take on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment: spend a Month at the Museum, to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From October 20 to November 18, 2010, this person’s mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here and reporting your experience to the outside world. There will be plenty of time to explore the Museum and its exhibits after hours, with access to rarely seen nooks and crannies of this 77-year-old institution.

If the contestant is successful in staying inside for one month, he or she will win $10,000 and a bunch of tech gadgets. Plus, you get to explore as much as you want! The museum has a lot of very cool things, like the only German U-Boat in the U.S., a coal mine, and the Silver Streak passenger train.

The contest information page is here. But hurry–submissions are due by August 11th.

Amy Poehler interviews smart girls about their accomplishments.  I really enjoyed this.  Hope you do, too!

Click here for super cool video.

“Here, let me kiss it and make it better.”

— moms from time immemorial

In a recent post on wellness and woo, a commenter pointed me to one of the most interesting articles I’ve ever read about medicine: Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. The most interesting part of the article (for me) was the idea that — rather than dismissing the placebo response as gullibility and a nuisance to research — it’s an effect that scientists can research, to benefit patients.

One finding was that the health-care practitioner’s empathy can give the placebo response a huge boost: » Continue reading “The Amazing Placebo Response!”