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• Scottish Health Board Says Drink Up, Pregnant Ladies

  Okay, they didn't exactly say "drink up." But the NHS Lothian, Scotland's national health organization, has urged the government to abandon advice that tells women they should abstain entirely from alcohol while pregnant or trying to conceive. As reported on scotsman.com, the NHS Lothian told the Scottish government that suggesting pregnant women cannot have even one drink "stigmatises any of them choosing to have a single glass of wine" and also "causes unnecessary anxiety." The NHS Lothian acknowledges that excessive drinking clearly should be avoided but notes that there is no evidence that having one or two units -- aka servings -- of wine a couple of times a week will harm the child. Read More... Posted Oct 12 2008, 02:02 PM by Jen Chaney with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: health, Scotland, drinking while pregnant, wine during pregnancy, alcohol during pregnancy, advice for pregnant moms, NHS Lothian

• Five Things to Tell Your Kids If They Find a Head on a Beach

  We have all found ourselves in some challenging parental situations. But I cannot even imagine what the mother of two young girls said to her daughters yesterday after they discovered a severed head on a beach in Scotland. I mean, really, at what point in those pre-natal caregiving classes do they prepare you for something like this? I'm pretty sure Parenting magazine has never done a special issue on addressing decapitation. In case, like me, you're wondering how you would handle the same situation -- besides, you know, screaming, calling the cops and possibly barfing -- here is a list of five things you might say to your children if they, too, find a severed head on a beach. (Note: If you don't appreciate dark humor as a means to cope with horrifying news, please proceed to the next blog post.) Read More... Posted Apr 02 2008, 09:02 AM by Jen Chaney with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Scotland, parental advice, severed head

• Video Games Make Kids Smarter, Uh Huh

  Scotland, land of haggis, plaid, and the best damned scrambled eggs I have ever eaten, has come up with something bound to make the kids in your house very, very happy: there's evidence that kids who played video games on a Nintendo DS every day before school for 20 minutes had better test scores (as high as 43% better! though the average was 10%), better concentration, and better behaviour than the kids who didn't. Uh, make that behavior. But wait! There's one slight caveat... Read More... Posted Oct 28 2007, 09:51 AM by Karen Murphy with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: kids, education, video games, Scotland, Karen Murphy, Nintendo DS

• TV: It's The Devil, Apparently

  The Scotsman has a pretty comprehensive article on the many ills of television: autism, obesity, myopia, ADD and more--all the fault of television. What makes this scare article a little different from the others is that it zooms in on the production of melatonin, a hormone responsible for regulating sleep and also linked to the onset of puberty. Melatonin production can be suppressed by too much exposure to bright lights, and television may just be a bright enough light to affect it. Exposure to anything that affects melatonin production may not only cause erratic sleep, but might affect the immune system, the body's ability to ward off cancer-causing cell mutations, and could affect a child's natural timeframe for puberty. There are also significant links to excessive television watching and a person's metabolism, as well as links to Alzheimer's Disease. And I wish that were the gist of it, but there's oh, so much more. Dole out the television judiciously, won't you?   Posted Feb 19 2007, 09:10 AM by Patti with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: television, health, autism, obesity, Scotland, children's health, melatonin, ADD