Lenny and Amy’s 5-year-old son has epilepsy. When conventional medications caused terrible side effects, they started giving him a daily drop of cannabis oil, with dramatic results. But it’s a calculated risk: While there is anecdotal evidence of cannabis’ effectiveness, scientists face research roadblocks because it’s a schedule 1 controlled substance. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports
Category: News
The Hidden Cost for Stay-At-Home Parents
Bloomberg News posted a fascinating article about the money a stay-at-home parent loses over time. Beyond the obvious loss of a regular paycheck, it discusses reduced wages when returning to work and the loss of retirement funds. With the costs of daycare being sky-high more and more families are keeping a parent at home to raise a child. This is what we choose to do and while we can scrape by each month these expounded costs are eye opening… and a little depressing!
It’s really worth reading if you want to learn how a stay-at-home parent can, “lose about $706,778 in lifetime income from taking five years off to care for a child.” WOAH!
In our situation at least, staying at home was precipitated by a birth injury he suffered (it’s fully healed now). We don’t have any family near by to help with raising our kid so to be able to help him recover it was a no-brainer that one of us was going to leave our job.
Being the main breadwinner, I kept working while my wife became a stay-at-home parent. And not having family around means that she is always on, no sick days, no breaks and no extra hands to help out.
We’ve thought about daycare or a nanny-share but now that our income is so reduced it’s just not possible.
On the flip side… If we were both working he wouldn’t see either of us either. I don’t know how so many families can handle this emotionally. As his dad I feel like I only get slivers of time in the morning and at night. It’s a bummer to not be involved with him more.
Weekends are so important in helping us bond – something I really notice when he falls, skins his knee and Mommy is the only he will allow to comfort him (note to self: it’s only a phase!).
At the same time we are all so lucky that he’s been able to bond so closely with his mom. That’s a financial sacrifice we have chosen to continue to make. We know that when he does have his sad moments she can comfort him in a way that no caregiver will ever be able to. A hug from mom is somehow always that much better. (Do you agree?)
My wife has the hardest, most exhausting and important job on earth now. It’s a shame that it’s costing us so much money to provide that to our son.
What do you do? Are you a stay-at-home parent or are you working? How do you manage the emotional strain and stresses that each causes? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comment section below.
Hardcore music, the Children’s Tumor Foundation & Jiujitsu?
A few weeks ago I was asked to put together a video documenting a fundraiser for the Children’s Tumor Foundation. The mix of people involved was just fantastic and a reminder to never judge a book by it’s cover.
Please take a moment to watch the video below and see hardcore music Legends John “Bloodclot” Joseph, Hoya de la Roc and the Brazilian Jiujitsu Community put on a great event to benefit the Children’s Tumor Foundation.
These guys may be “scary” with tattoos and gruff language but they have hearts of gold and what they are doing to help this family is inspiring.
Learn more about John Joseph here:
http://www.purepma.com
Learn more about Hoya and Madball here:
https://www.facebook.com/madballNYC/
Learn more about Clockwork Jiujitsu at:
http://clockworkbjj.com/
Folic Acid During Pregnancy May Lower Risk of Childhood Obesity
The New York Times posted a story today about a new study, in JAMA Pediatrics, that has found a correlation between folic acid during pregnancy and a reduced risk for obesity in children.
BMI gains during childhood may increase stroke risk in adulthood
A new study out of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark is suggesting a link between a high body mass index (BMI) in childhood and the risk for strokes in adulthood.
As widely known, the effects of being overweight as a child can influence a wide range of health issues later in life, such as type 2 diabetes.
Read the full article at healio.com
That stuff we all worry about.
Now that summer’s heat is here, it feels like a good time to remember that leaving your child (or pet) in the car can be deadly (not that you should ever be doing this anyway).
In the U.S., 9 children have died this year already because of heat stroke. These figures come from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NINE KIDS! That’s crazy sad to me.
MyChamplainValley.com posted a short news story about this and interviewed David Grass, the Environmental Health Surveillance Chief of the Vermont Department of Health. He had this to say about leaving your kid in the car:
It’s particularly dangerous because the internal temperature of a car [can] increase as many as 20 degrees in 10 minutes. So it can really take minutes for conditions where heat stroke can occur.
When in temperature inside a car reaches 87 degrees, you are 8 times more likely to go to the emergency room because of a heat related illness.
Free Movies Coming to Amazon Prime in June
Some great kids programming is coming to Amazon Prime this June.
- The Black Stallion (1979)
- Wayne’s World (1992) …Perhaps this one is best for teens!
- Lego Ninjago: Season 1
If you don’t already have a Amazon Prime subscription you can sign up for a free trial. We love our Prime subscription. Besides tons of great video content, you get free 2 day shipping on thousands of items. We buy a LOT of diapers and wipes this way. 🙂
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/2016/05/coming_to_amazon_prime_in_june.html
Coming to Netflix this June: Dinosaurs
Attention Mom and Dad, June 2016 will see the addition of three movies super popular with young adults and kids: JURASSIC PARK!
Available June 1:
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
- Jurassic Park III (2001)
Other kid friendly series hitting Netflix are:
- LEGO Friends: The Power of Friendship – Season 2 (June 10th)
- All Hail King Julien – Season 3 (June 17) This is based of the hit movie franchise Madagascar.
SOURCE: http://www.whats-on-netflix.com/coming-soon/june-2016-new-netflix-releases/
Does a late dinner lead to Childhood Obesity?
Here is an interesting story reported by FoodNavigator.com
Researchers at King’s College in London have not been able to establish a significant link between eating dinner after 8pm and obesity in children. These findings contradict published research that believes circadian rhythms are impacted by meal times, which interfere with metabolic processes within the body.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), estimates of the number of overweight infants and children in the WHO European Region rose steadily from 1990 to 2008.
This is important because more than 60% of children who are overweight before hitting puberty will be overweight in early adulthood. That’s a crazy high number!
Research had currently suggested that eating late dinners could contribute to obesity in adults and children – until now.
The Dancing Baby That Changed Law
You may remember the news back in 2007 about how Universal Music Group freaked out and got YouTube to take down a 29-second long video of a baby dancing. Why? A song by Prince was playing in the background. What is amazing to me is that the audio quality is so horrible that I’m practically unable to recognize the Prince song being played and I am a Prince fan! This was shot back way in 2007 when YouTube was but an infant itself.
Universal claimed that the video was copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ironically named Stephanie Lenz (get it? Lenz? Like a camera lens?), who uploaded the video and is the mother of the baby, sued Universal for wrongly targeting lawful fair use. This is pretty amazing when you think about it. How many mom’s and dad’s would have just rolled their eyes and taken the video down? Nope, not Lenz. She knew this was stupid and fought for your rights to post your home movies.
The story caught the attention of the media at first, but as it slowly made it’s way though the courts everyone forgot about it. Now we finally have a decision that impacts the video she uploaded and extends way beyond into the thousands of videos upload by parents each year to Youtube, Facebook and Instagram.
On September 14th a three-judge panel in San Francisco’s federal appeals court sided with the dancing baby and ruled unanimously in favor of Lenz, saying that copyright holders must consider whether a use of material is fair before sending a take-down notice.
NPR’s Laura Sydell put it succinctly saying, “Fair Use permits people to use copyrighted material in certain situations like satire or news. Now three judges on the 9th circuit say that unless Universal evaluated whether it was fair use, it may have violated the rights of the video maker. The case is significant because critics say copyright owners like Universal abuse the take down process often at the expense of free expression.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who represented Lens in the lawsuit, pointed to how this ruling will impact the 2016 presidential election by stating, “The decision made by the appeals court today has ramifications far beyond Ms. Lenz’s rights to share her video with family and friends. We will all watch a lot of online video and analysis of presidential candidates in the months to come, and this ruling will help make sure that information remains uncensored.”
So the next time you take a cute video of your kid dancing to a gratuitously sexual 80’s pop-funk genius – don’t fret. That video is YOUR video. This extends beyond kids too… Is the dog doing something stupid? Quick, get a video! Let’s Go Crazy!