Get Your Kids MovingWritten by Laura S. Garrett, RD, LD
Are your children active? Inactivity among children is becoming an epidemic. Motivating your children to be active not only improves their health now, but it will also benefit them later in life.Here are some facts: * Lack of exercise is a major reason for growing rate of obesity among children. Rather than letting your child watch TV all day, encourage him to spend time each day in play that requires him to be physically active. * Exercise can strengthen children's bones, something they will benefit from as adults. Children who participate in weight-bearing impact sports such as running, gymnastics, tumbling, and dance have higher bone density than children whose major activity is a non-weight-bearing exercise such as swimming. * Active children may increase their chance of becoming healthy adults. Children who enjoy being active are more likely to develop lifelong, healthy habit of being physically active. Physical activity decreases risk of obesity, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, stoke, and heart disease later in life. Simply put, people who are active on a regular basis tend to live longer than inactive individuals.
| | Boy Bashing?Written by Valerie Zilinsky
Sometimes I wonder what these fashion designers are thinking. I read an article in our local newspaper recently which left me in wonder. What happened to girl power? Teaching our daughters to respect themselves? Emphasizing self-esteem & sexual equality?Now, it seems that someone in fashion industry decided that it's a good thing for our girls to brag about how they look down on male gender. To them, it's cool to treat men & boys like unworthy objects. Is that supposed to make our daughters feel better about themselves? Your daughter can actually walk into a well-known department store and purchase shirts with sayings like: "Boys Lie" "Boys Are Great - Everyone Should Own One" "Lying, Cheating, Stinking Boys" Now, I have no problem with girls wearing shirts that say things like "Girls Rule", or "Girls Are Great", but since when is it cool to talk bad about someone else to make ourselves feel better? Isn't that something that responsible adults are supposed to teach our kids to NOT do? Not only that, but can you imagine what kinds of things men's & boy's department will fight back with? Are you going to put your foot down and draw line, explaining to young girls in your life why this is NOT cool?
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