How to Choose Safe Baby and Toddler Products

August 30th, 2010 by Colleen Hurley, RD, Certified Kid’s Nutrition Specialist

For the month of September, Mum Mum’s will be focusing  our attention on the safety of the products that your child comes into contact with everyday.  We’ve already discussed choosing healthy baby and toddler foods, but what about non-food items? How do parents go about becoming child safety savvy? Here are 7 tips for shopping for safe baby and toddler products:

Choose age-appropriate:  as a basic rule, be sure that any products you buy (especially toys) are age appropriate to avoid any accidents, physical harm, or choking hazards.Keep up with recalls:  Stay on top of product recalls by both searching the web and visiting the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CSPS) website for the most up to date child product recall information.Follow the guidelines: Follow the safety guidelines, also published by the CSPS, as well as individual product recommendations for assembly and use.Research and review: the internet can be a valuable place for new parents, especially before purchasing some of the bigger ticket items like cribs, highchairs, and car seats.  If you have a particular product in mind, search through blogs, opinions, or other review before you buy.Seek independence: look for independent reviews or testing/evaluation on a product provided by a third party company.  Consumer Reports is a great resource and has a whole section dedicated to babies and children. Go to the Source: the most reputable product manufacturers or even their vendors will provide public statements about product content, manufacturing procedures, materials, and quality assurance testing.Keep a watchful eye: the best way to keep kids safe is to keep an eye on them at all times.  In addition, periodically perform random product checks of your own on the items you or your child use frequently to make sure nothing is broken, poses a potential injury, or has any paint chipping off.

Tags: safe baby products, safe toddler products

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 9:32 am and is filed under Baby Development, Baby Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Car Seat Safety

Mum Mum’s focus this month is on product safety, thus we are following up on our crib guide with another pivotal parental purchase – car seats.  Parents have the daunting task of shopping in an inundated market for a product critical for safely carrying their most precious cargo.  To help parents along is a car seat shopping guide as seen on HealthyChildren.org; a website for families run by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). This is the AAP’s most up to date information on how to purchase a safe car seat:

Time to Buckle Up the Right Way

Every parent knows never to let a child ride in a car without buckling up in an approved car safety seat. But are you aware that some studies estimate that as many as 80 percent of car safety seats are used incorrectly? That means four out of every five children are riding in improperly installed, poorly fitting and/or damaged seats that may not protect them as designed in the event of a crash.

Even more shocking is the fact that many parents are completely unaware that their child is among those at risk. Before you drive another mile with your kids in the car, review these tips for selecting, installing, and using car safety seats.

Good, Better or Best?

No one seat is “best” or “safest.” When choosing a car safety seat, remember:

Cost is not an indicator of quality. All car safety seats available for purchase in the United States must meet very strict safety standards established and maintained by the federal government.Fit is key. Before you buy, put your child in the seat and adjust the harnesses and buckles. Also, try installing the seat in your car to ensure it fits properly and securely.

New Is Better

Avoid a used car safety seat, especially one from a yard sale or thrift shop, because there is no way to know the seat’s history. Most manufacturers recommend that car safety seats only be used for a certain number of years. Car safety seats wear out over time, and older seats may be missing important parts, labels, or instructions. Secondhand seats may have damage that you cannot see, or may have been recalled.

Size Matters

Your baby should ride rear-facing until she has reached at least one year of age and weighs at least 20 pounds. At that point, she can face forward; however, it’s best for her to ride rear-facing as long as possible. Convertible seats and some infant-only seats have rear-facing weight limits of 30 to 35 pounds and height limits of at least 32 to 36 inches. Once your baby has outgrown the rear-facing weight or height limit for her seat, she should ride in a forward-facing seat until she outgrows it. If you have used your convertible seat rear-facing, you will need to make some adjustments before using it forward-facing. Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions. When she has outgrown her harness-style seat (check the instructions for the forward-facing height and weight limits), she should ride in a booster seat until the seat belt fits properly. This means that the shoulder belt lies across the middle of the chest and shoulder, the lap belt is low and snug across the thighs, and the child is tall enough to sit against the vehicle seat back with her knees bent without slouching and can stay in this position comfortably throughout the trip. This is usually when the child reaches about 4’9” and is between 8 and 12 years of age.

Tight Is Right

When installing any car safety seat, remember: The seat must be buckled tightly into your vehicle and your child must be buckled snugly into the seat. If you can pinch any harness webbing between your fingers, and/or the seat can be moved more than one inch from side to side or toward the front of the car, then you need to tighten it up.

Read Up on Safety

Always read and follow the manufacturer’s instructions, which outline proper installation and usage. If you don’t have the instructions, contact the manufacturer for a replacement copy.

Back Seat Is Best

The safest place for all children to ride is in the back seat. It is especially important never to place a child in a rear-facing car safety seat in the front seat of a vehicle that has a passenger air bag.

Call for Help

Still puzzled? A Child Passenger Safety (CPS) Technician can answer questions and help install your car safety seat.

Tags: car seats, purchasing safe car seats, safe car seats

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Baby Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Healthy Toddler Snacks

Is your child too busy playing to stop and eat? When he does slow down for a snack, does he take only 2 bites and race back to what he was doing? If you answered yes to these questions, you are probably the parent of a toddler. With such erratic eating habits, it is important you provide healthy, nutritious snacks for your toddler.

Nutrient Density

A general rule of thumb when it comes to healthy toddler snacks is to aim for nutrient density and avoid empty calories.  Nutrient density is the ratio of nutrients to calories and essentially means getting the greatest amount of nutrients in the least amount of calories. Calorie restriction is not recommended for toddlers; however, you can get more bang for your buck when it comes to food choices. Empty calories are those foods high in calories, but providing very little to no nutrients – sugary drinks or soda are examples.

Keep in mind, as stated in the toddler feeding guide, your child may only want to eat crackers for several days. This is perfectly normal so just keep offering other food options and eventually she will want something else.  If you are still nursing 3-4 times per day, know that she is getting plenty of nutrients from breast milk. If you have weaned her off the breast, limit milk to 2-3 cups per day as this may replace her desire to eat other foods. 

 A few simple rules for toddler snacking:

Kids love finger foodsAim for nutrient densityAvoid Empty CaloriesLet them grazeKeep in mind they have tiny tummies

 Power Packed Snacks

Although snacks are not meant to replace meals, they can be a good opportunity to provide the nutrients he might have missed when he refused to eat his lunch.  Here are some toddler snacks that are fun and healthy:

  Hit the Trail Mix: mix dried fruit and his favorite dried cerealBanana-sickles: stick ½ banana on a Popsicle stick, spread on some nut butter, and roll in cereal or granolaEggs-citing: eggs are a great source of iron and protein. Try a hard-boiled egg, an afternoon omelet, or egg salad in a mini pita pocketCheese Please: cheese is a great source of calcium, try cheese cubes or string cheese with some grapesSlice it up: you can’t go wrong with fresh fruit; try sliced apples, pears, or oranges. Serve with some nut butter to dipVeggie dip: try raw carrot or celery sticks, steamed broccoli or peapods with a side of ranch dressingSmooth Sailing: mix frozen berries, a splash of milk, ½ banana, and a few scoops of plain or vanilla yogurt

Tags: healthy toddler snacks, toddler feeding

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Baby Feeding, Baby Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Common Parenting Plan Templates

June 24th, 2010Leave a commentGo to comments

To get started making your parenting plan, you should first look at some . Here are some types of common templates that can give you a foundation for making the rest of your plan.

1. A joint legal and physical custody template. This is a type of shared parenting plan. With a joint legal and physical custody plan, both parents have the children live with them for significant periods of time (these exact arrangements are based on the needs of the children and not on giving the parents equal time) and both parents make decisions for and are involved with the children. To make this kind of plan, it works best if the mother and father can sit down together and agree on the plan.

2. A joint legal and sole physical custody template. In this plan, the parents share the responsibility of making decisions for the children (legal custody) but the child lives primarily with one parent and visits the other parent. This type of plan works if one parent is the primary caretaker of the children but the other parent still wants access to records and wants to be involved with the children.

3. A sole legal and physical custody template. With this arrangement, one parent has all legal responsibility for the children and makes all of the decisions for them. The parents also live with this parent and visit the other parent. This template is not a very good one if both parents are involved in the child’s life. In cases of domestic violence and crime, this is the template the parents usually follow.

Should You Have a Sole or Joint Custody Parenting Plan?

What kind of parenting plan is the best one for your child and you? To help you decide, this post looks at the difference between a sole and a joint parenting plan.

A Sole Custody Parenting Plan

A sole custody parenting plan can mean a few different things because there are two types of custody: physical and legal. Physical custody refers to the parenting time that each parent has the children, and legal custody refers to the parental responsibility that each parent has for the children. For example, physical custody covers how the parents will share custody and visitation and legal custody covers how the mother and father will make decisions for the child. If one parent has sole physical custody of the child it means that the child lives primarily with that parent and visits the other parent. If a parent has sole legal custody, it means that parent has the authority to make all decisions for the child.

A sole parenting plan is usually referring to a situation where a parent has sole physical custody. The parent may also have sole legal custody, but that is a more unusual situation. This type of plan will have a sole custody parenting time schedule where the child lives with one parent (usually called the custodial parent) and visits the other parent (the non-custodial parent). A typical sole custody schedule is the weekend schedule–where one parent has the children during the week and the other parent has visitation on the weekends. The visitation can be every weekend, every other weekend, the 1st and 3rd weekends, the 2nd and 4th weekend, etc. The parents can also schedule a visit during the week if they want.

Generally, the non-custodial parent will pay child support to the custodial parent. This is because the custodial parent has a lot more financial obligation to the child because the child is living with that parent. A sole parenting plan can also have a provision about how the parents will pay for extra expenses for the child. They may also want to come up with a way to track expenses.

Parents can also add other provisions in the sole agreement to help the situation work better. Some common provisions include a process for how parents will resolve disputes, how the parents will handle transportation for the visits, how changes can be made to the visitation schedule, etc.

Some states have a preference for a joint parenting plan, so in these states a parent who wants a sole parenting plan must be prepared to show why a sole plan is better for the child.

A Joint Parenting Plan

A joint custody parenting plan is when the parents share physical and legal custody. It doesn’t necessarily mean that each parent has the children exactly half of the time. Instead, it means that the parenting time schedule gives both parents significant time with the children. In a joint plan, both parents are involved with raising the children.

One parent may still pay child support in a joint arrangement. The parents also agree to share the other expenses that come up with the child. A joint plan should specify how the parents will handle the finances of raising the child. Parents can also add provisions that can help the plan work more smoothly. They may need to have provisions about resolving disputes, making changes to the plan, handling transportation for exchanges, etc.

Some states have a preference for joint custody. If this is the case, the court will look more favorably on a joint parenting plan.

A Parenting Plan Template for Parents in High Conflict

July 12th, 2010Leave a commentGo to comments

Philip M. Stahl has an excellent book called Parenting After Divorce: A Guide to Resolving Conflicts and Meeting Your Children’s  Needs. In this book, he has a section about parenting plans for parents with high conflict situations. As he talks about what is needed in the plan, he says: “You might find that more detail is needed than you think so that there is less conflict in the future. If you create a careful and well-thought-out parenting plan, you can save considerable aggravation later.” He than recommends the following parenting plan template for parents in high conflict.

1. A clear and well defined schedule. Along with a schedule that shows when each parent has the children, Stahl recommends that parents specify how exchanges will be made for visits, a procedure for a one-time change to the schedule, who has the ultimate power to decide when the parents disagree, etc.

2. Information about making decisions for the children. The parenting plan should state if the parent who has physical custody has the right to make daily decisions and how the parents will make big decisions together.

3. Information about financial responsibilities. The parents needs to decide how they will pay for things that aren’t covered by child support.

4. A process for how the parents will manage disputes. Parents can use mediation, arbitration, or another method to resolve disputes without going to court.

5. Provisions about: who will provide care when the parent isn’t available during custody time (the right of first refusal gives the other parent priority), how the parents will handle transportation during exchanges, how the parents will review and make changes to the plan, how the parents will handle additional responsibilities of parenting (like if the child gets sick, going to school meetings, etc), how the parents will manage the child’s religious education, and how the parents will share information with each other.

It makes a lot of sense if parents have a lot of conflict to make a really detailed parenting plan. The nice thing about the custody software Custody X Change, is that it lets parents add all of these parts to the plan. It also helps parents in high conflict because they can use the computer to make the process more objective–they can look at the screen and explore different options for parenting time, they can use the timeshare calculator to know exactly what’s going on, they can easily make sample and example plans, they can easily make changes as needed, etc. If you are in a high conflict custody situation, Stahl’s book can be a good reference. Custody X Change can also help you get a good, detailed parenting plan that can make the situation better.

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