A while back I got wind of this fun video from MomsRising.org.  You punch in the name of a mom you love, and you will see a little fake news piece about how she’s Mother of the Year. Cute.

I must have signed up for emails somehow, because I’m getting them.  And while I usually unsubscribe as quickly as possible from stuff like that, these emails from MomsRising have been fairly informative.  Today I got one about the Family Tax Relief Act of 2009, and instead of doing a quick delete, I actually clicked the link and sent a letter to my Senators asking them to sponsor it.  

If anyone has kids in daycare, you probably know there are some handy tax deductions that come into play.  This bill improves them and aims to make daycare more affordable.

I’m sure we’ve all seen this study or at least have heard about it by now. It seems to me that all moms are talking about this in some form, and it’s scaring several moms I know.

A recent study showed that children who spend more time in daycare than their non-daycare-attending counterparts tended to act out more by the time they reached kindergarten. (The newscast below says, “went to school,” so I’m assuming that’s kindergarten, but I suppose it could be pre-school.) And apparently, researchers found that the quality of the facility and those who supervise doesn’t matter—it’s the length of time kids spend in daycare that may affect behavior.

What do you think, readers? Have you seen any difference in children you know? Would you attribute the length of time these children spend in a daycare facility or at home to be the primary reason for any major behavioral differences?

By the way, if you can find the text of the study itself, let me know. I did a quick search and came up empty-handed.

When my daughter caught her first cold in the daycare at the YMCA, people told me that it was, in the long run, a good thing. Getting sick now, they said, would build her immune system and make her stronger. If it didn’t happen in daycare, then it’d happen in preschool. No matter how much I wanted to protect her, she would eventually have to go through a period of illness. Getting sick was a right of passage into the world of immunity. Was this an old wives’ tale, I wondered, or was there any truth to it?

» Continue reading “Fact or Fiction? “Building” Your Child’s Immunity Through Illness”