With winter upon us, the two most dreaded words for parents are SNOW DAY. We know that means coming up with crafts, meals, activities, games, and more just to keep our kids entertained. That’s what we have to do, right? We have to come up with ways to keep our kids stimulated, energized, learning, and happy. Only…we don’t.

The wonderfully insightful Lenore Skenazy (of Free Range Kids) argues that we’re overdoing it. Our kids don’t need us to jump through hoops to keep them entertained. Let THEM do it themselves.

You must play with your kids is so ingrained that we feel terrible when we’re bored sick by the idea of pouring another imaginary cup of tea. But maybe, like most pain, that boredom is trying to tell us something: Kiddie games are for KIDS. They really don’t need us!

No one is saying to neglect your kids. There are times for museums, classes, swim lessons, and games of Chutes and Ladders with Dad. However, it’s also important to let children do their own thing without an adult giving direction. Sometimes we forget that.

So, thanks to Lenore for the reminder!

Photo

(The picture is of my son’s leg after getting his vaccinations)

Andrew Wakefield kicked off the anti vaccination movement with his paper published in 1998 that claimed to show a link between Autism and vaccines. His  findings  have been proven false over and over again. It was also found that he most likely faked his data.

Last week  the UK’s General Medical Council found that Andrew Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” when doing his research. And now The Lancet (who published the paper) has issued a full retraction.

This is very good news and I hope that this will help put parents concerns about vaccinating their children to rest.

In other news, Bill Gates has committed $10 Billion (yes Billion!)  to develop and deliver vaccines to children in the developing world. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

I get a daily email from the American Council on Science and Health called “Health Facts and Fears”. In that news letter Dr Gilbert Ross is quoted as saying of Bill Gates, “We must give credit to him for taking a very effective, targeted, lifesaving approach to charitable giving as opposed to activists, who prefer to wage irrational attacks on substances that have no nexus with human health.”

I’m a Mac girl but this makes me want to buy a PC!

Davi Napolean, a reader, sent this article to us a while ago, and I finally got around to reading it. As a theater person myself, I found it interesting. Enjoy!

And by the way, we really love it when people send us links, although I believe we are all so often busy cleaning up vomit and trying to manage naps that it might take us a while to post them.

So, it’s about 20 years ago, and one of my kids, then around 10, is in Meredith Wilson’s band at the Ann Arbor Civic Theater, learning his instrument through the Think Method. During a rehearsal break, the kids are talking about where they go to church or synagogue. Everyone but my son has something to share. He comes home, upset: “Mama, how come we don’t believe in anything?”

“We do believe in something,” I assure him. “We just don’t believe there’s a God.”

“What do we believe in?” I’ve left him outnumbered and defenseless, and I have to come up with something fast. “We believe in the theater,” I tell him. I might have said we believe in the First Amendment or in the scientific method, which would have been true, too.

I thought this study was interesting, and the way the article reports the study is pretty fair:

Whether or not spanking equates with dumber kids is not known, and may never be known. That’s because the only way to truly show cause and effect would be to follow over time two groups of kids, one randomly assigned to get spanked and another who would not get spanked.

Obviously, that sort of study would not be palatable for anyone involved.  So the author of this article did a good job of making it clear that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.  Way to be.  That said, here’s what the study did find: » Continue reading “Study Links Spanking to Lower IQ”

duncan @ five minutes

By Dean Cameron

This past August 1, 2009 at 10:45am, my son, Duncan Huxley Cameron was born.

Not only is he quite a bit bigger now than he is in that photo, his ability to melt me with a look, has increased.

We are raising him as rationally as possible. Obviously, he’ll make his own decisions about how to interact with his world, but we’ll tell the truth as we see it and let it go. There’s plenty of woo out there for him to encounter and deal with on his own, so we don’t need to burden him with more at home. It’s going to be intersting as, even before he was born, people I consider rational were saying really weird and irrational things.

» Continue reading “Guest Dad Post – HAVIN’ MY BABAY”

Check out this article about how homebirth increases the neonatal mortality rate by Amy Tuteur, the Skeptical OB.  I’ve been reading her blog for a while now.  I started with her previous blog, Homebirth Debate.  There is probably something appealing to many folks on Dr. Amy’s, whether you are interested in homebirth, or dead set against homebirth, or just wanting information about homebirth, or really, even if you don’t give a hoot about homebirth but just love to watch people get seriously into it with each other in the comments.  I mean, these folks go at it.  It’s kind of like the Jerry Springer of skeptical blogs.  I can’t get enough. » Continue reading “Fighting–er, I mean debating about homebirth”

It’s an exciting day for secular parenting! In Britain, Richard Dawkins is helping to launch the first summer camp for non-believers.

Richard Dawkins is subsidising the camp which will offer children aged eight to 17 the chance to sing along to John Lennon’s Imagine and have lessons in evolution.

The five-day camp, based in Somerset, promises to be ‘beyond belief’ – the event’s motto – and will rival traditional faith-based breaks run by the Scouts and church groups.

It’s great to have this option for children. It’s another place that can help teach our kids, according to Dawkins, to “think for themselves sceptically and rationally.”

Dale McGowan is there for us freethinking parents. He has two books on the topic of raising children in nonreligious households: Parenting Beyond Belief, the “first comprehensive book for nonreligious parents”, which includes a collection of essays by Julia Sweeney, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette and others, and Raising Freethinkers, which is a practical guide to parenting beyond belief, which includes activities and resources for the actual hands-on aspects of the subject.  He also has a blog, The Meming of Life, which gives freethinking parents continuous support, with short articles and funny anecdotes.

In addition to these resources, » Continue reading “Parenting Beyond Belief Channel on YouTube”

Skepdad compiled a fantastic list of blogs, book recommendations, and other links:

These are sites I read, books I reference, documents I consult, or information I find otherwise useful and interesting. I’ve put it here specifically to be a central hub of information (hopefully useful for others) for all things skeptical, science, parenting, educational, or otherwise tangential to that.

Check it out.  You will be reading for days and days.

Underground Moms!

Underground Moms are not different from other moms in most ways: just trying to raise our kids and live our lives.  What’s different is that we try to examine the parenting culture we are swimming in, a culture that has brought us baby knee pads, professional babyproofers and prime time specials on child abductions.  Not to mention Baby Einstein.  (Do you know what the real Einstein played with as a child?  He built card houses.  So much for “educational DVDs”.) » Continue reading “Right on.”