Get Your Child Ready for Daylight-Savings Time March 13

(Here is a timely guest post with tips for parents about how to adjust your child's sleep schedules around daylight-savings time.  I thought these were great tips, and it is hard to believe daylight-savings time is this upcoming weekend!)

Time springs forward March 13 this year. Daylight-saving time signals spring’s arrival: blossoms emerging, extended playtime and spring break festivities. But, it also can mean a tough time for parents and kids at bedtime.

“Moms with little ones are either bracing for these sleep disturbances or not thinking about it at all and will scramble to get children to sleep afterward with much frustration,” says University of Alabama at Birmingham assistant professor of pediatrics – and mother of two – Jennifer Chambers, M.D. 

Chambers offers some tips to resolve potential sleep issues:

• Stick to the schedule. Be strict with your children’s normal bedtime in the week prior to the time change. If bedtime is 8 p.m., start your bedtime routine early enough that they can be asleep by bedtime or a little earlier. 
• Eat meals on time or 30 minutes earlier. Meal times help set the day's routine more than anything else.   
• Put kids to bed a little early the night of the time change so that they wake up earlier.  (You can savor this last night of easy bedtime after the kids are asleep.) 
• Don't let them sleep late the first morning of daylight-saving time; you need them to be tired by bedtime. Early morning sun will reset the internal clock faster than anything else, so get them outside early in the morning if possible. 
• Shift naps earlier and do not extend them the first week. Some may be tempted to skip a nap in hopes this will make the child go to bed earlier, but some children will not rest as well during the night if they are overtired. 
• Explain daylight-saving time if your child is old enough to understand. They will be less likely to resist going to bed “early” if they understand it. Many children will find it intriguing and ask a multitude of questions about the ability to change time. 
• Be a little lax with bedtime the week after the time change. Set bedtime 30 minutes later than normal during this week to make the transition smoother and return children to their regular bedtime the next week, after their bodies have adjusted. But, still begin the bedtime routine at the regular time so they can calm down and get sleepy. 

“Personally, I have sleep-finicky kids, so I do all of these things and still have to hang dark sheets over the windows that first week,” Chambers says. “But you need to remove the sheets in the morning, so the light can come through the window to help reset their internal clock. Hanging the sheets is cumbersome, but it works. After that, their own little bodies will adjust and begin to take the lead and get them to bed without so much work on your part.”

Some parents choose to make bedtime later in the spring or summer months. Chambers says this is reasonable — but not more than 30 minutes, in order to maintain good sleep habits and prevent kids from being overtired.

Finally, Chambers says to relax. 

“American parents tend to stress over their child's sleep schedule more than parents in other countries. As long as you are not filling their days with too many scheduled and out-of-the-home activities, most children will adhere to a sensible sleep schedule.  Children need down time at home and a relaxing bedtime routine, accompanied by a listening ear to hear about their day and lots of snuggles.” 

The UAB Health System includes all of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s patient care activities, including UAB Hospital, the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital and The Kirklin Clinic. UAB is the state of Alabama’s largest employer and an internationally renowned research university and academic health center;  its professional schools and specialty patient-care programs are consistently ranked among the nation’s top 50. UAB Hospital is one of the 10 largest in the United States. Find more information at www.uab.edu and www.uabmedicine.org.

 

The REINS Act Would Harm Children, the Elderly and Families

(Here is a timely guest post from our friends at the NRDC.  I thought it was important to share this right away.  Concerned parents can call or email their representatives to stop this dangerous legislation.)

No legislative hearings. No expert witnesses. No factual record. Fewer than 40 minutes of debate by nine members of Congress.

That's all it took for 250 members of the House of Representatives to vote to block EPAfrom implementing and enforcing standards to reduce mercury, arsenic, lead, PCBs, dioxins and furans, and heavy metals from cement plants.

Toxic air pollution standards that EPA spent more than two years developing, informed by thousands of public comments and the expertise of agency scientists, engineers, analysts, attorneys and economists.

Standards that would reduce mercury emissions and deadly particulate matter by 92%[pdf]. Safeguards that would avoid up to 2,500 premature deaths; 1,500 heart attacks; 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma; 32,000 cases of upper and lower respiratory symptoms; and 130,000 days when people would have missed miss work [pdf].

Now Tea Party activists, some corporate lobbyists and congressional conservatives want to make this cringeworthy example of legislative irresponsibility the norm for voiding health, safety and environmental protections issued by federal agencies.

These groups are supporting legislation called the REINS Act, Regulations of the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011, that would become an enabling weapon for big corporations and members of Congress seeking to kill health, safety and environmental protections with the same reckless disregard accorded EPA's mercury pollution standards.

As discussed in an overview of the REINS Act by my colleague, David Goldston, and my own Frequently Asked Questions about the legislation, the REINS Act represents a dream weapon for irresponsible corporations and congressional extremists seeking to eliminate health, safety and environmental protections through fundamentally anti-democratic maneuvers.

In a radical departure from longstanding constitutional norms and legislative practice, the REINS Act would allow health safeguards like the EPA mercury standards to be abolished as a result of just the reckless House vote described above.

In fact, if the REINS Act were the law tody, EPA's mercury standards would be extinguished already. Up to 25,000 Americans would die unnecessarily from cement plant poisons over the next decade. Over 160,000 pounds of avoidable mercury pollution would threaten pregnant women, fetuses and children.

Americans would be exposed every year to cement plants' emissions of the following air pollution levels that the EPA standards otherwise would prevent [pdf]: 16,600 pounds of mercury, 10,600 tons of hydrocarbon pollution,11,500 tons of deadly particulate matter, 5,800 tons of acid gases, 110,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 6,600 tons of nitrogen oxides.

The EPA air toxic standards have not been blocked, however, because: (1) the REINS Act is not the law of the land today; (2) the Senate will not match the House's reckless budget vote to block implementation and enforcement of the toxic standards; and (3) even if the Senate were to do so, the president very likely would veto such legislation without being overridden.

And that is why REINS Act proponents aim to eliminate all three barriers to anti-environmental extremism prevailing in Congress. As discussed more fully in myFrequently Asked Questions post, the REINS Act anoints one congressional chamber with the power to kill health, safety, welfare and environmental protections unilaterally. This is how the REINS Act circumvents Senate opposition and presidential vetoes that today block anti-environmental rampages in the House.

The REINS Act elevates the Tea Party to King Kong of the Hill, where conservative extremists can swat down public safeguards like so many buzzing toy prop planes.

My colleague David Goldston has aptly described the anti-environmental binge that took over the House floor during consideration of the Continuing Resolution (H.R.1), with a riot of budget "riders" and Tea Party ideology run amok. David's description of that spectacle applies equally to the treatment that agency health, safety and environmental protections would receive under the REINS Act:

Safeguards that had been in the works for years were summarily repudiated without any hearings, committee action or the other processes that constitute “regular order” and are designed to ensure that Members actually know the consequences of what they’re voting on. All that was needed to rollback a protection was a complaint from an industry that a Tea Party supporter accepted at face value and an ideological impulse to cripple the government.

Clean Air standards to reduce mercury, arsenic and lead from cement plants were but one example of over a dozen environmental safeguards that suffered that same ignominious fate as amendments to the Republican spending bill.

But at least those amendments are highly unlikely to become law, since they are opposed by the public, Senate and president.

In a future with the radical REINS Act, however, none of that responsible opposition would matter. All it would take is the irresponsible action of the House, repeating its same indifference to hearings, experts, factual records, reasonable debate and public health.

With the recent cement mercury vote in the House, we have a concrete example -- that we should disdain, not repeat -- of how the REINS Act would make the legislative process more toxic along with America's air and water.

4 Steps to Raising a Future Writer

(Here is a guest post from author and educator J. Richard Gentry.)


Lots of parents read aloud to their baby and toddler, but few take the next step: encouraging early writing. Did you know that babies can draw pictures (prewriting) and create narratives at between 2 and 3 years of age? A young child who is stimulated with targeted activities early and often can be writing and illustrating complex stories by age 4 or 5.

Why does this matter? Because studies show that when reading and writing is taught to children starting at birth, their neural pathways develop in different ways. They are more intelligent, have a 32-million-word advantage by kindergarten over children who did not get this exposure, and are less likely to develop learning problems such as dyslexia.

Over 30 years as an early childhood literacy, reading, and writing specialist, I have developed fun and simple activities parents can do with their babies and young children that help them develop writers' brains. They can be summed up in four easy-to-remember words in the acronym READ.

Repetition. Joyful repeated readings of favorite books are a hallmark of early reading and writing success. Long after you are exhausted rereading these favorite books, your baby or toddler will thrill in reading them over and over again. Babies love repetition, which encourages him to mimic the words and babble sounds -- early language responses. Over time, this mimicking behavior turns into higher-order concepts and understandings, and eventually memory "reading." Babies also mimic feelings during book sharing. If you read with feeling, it encourages your baby to have positive associations with reading.

Enthusiasm. Many experts agree that talking to your child and having frequent read-alouds, surrounded by talk about books during book sharing, are the most important brain-stimulation activities in parenting. You are activating her social, hearing, emotional, and linguistic systems all at once. The other E's in this step are Enticement, Exploration, Engagement, and Explosion. By enticing your child with fun reading activities, exploring new books, and engaging her in the process, her vocabulary, knowledge, and love of learning will explode. From birth to age 6 is when your baby's brain has the greatest ability to establish language proficiency.

Attention. When you read or write with your child, you are constantly making decisions about how to direct his attention. Since reading and writing are complex, at various times you must focus his attention to the many different aspects of language, reading, writing, or spelling. You are switching off between attention to sounds, meaning, rhythm or musicality of language, expression, feelings, letter naming, and letter formation, to name a few. The key is to do a variety of targeted reading and writing activities with your child that are appropriate and fun for his phase of development.

Drawing. Your child might be ready to scribble on paper long before you think she's able. Early scribbling is the precursor to early writing. With early marking and scribbling, she is showing an internal desire to communicate, joy in expressing ideas, and the urge to make meaning. Experts agree that drawing almost always opens the gate to early literacy. There are lots of fun and easy activities you can do with your toddler or preschooler to help her be an early writer.

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J. Richard Gentry PhD is the author of Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write -- from Baby to Age 7 (Da Capo / Perseus, www.jrichardgentry.com), which is chock-full of reading and writing development tips and activities you can do with your baby and young child. Dr. Gentry is a nationally acclaimed expert on childhood literacy, reading, and spelling development, with more than 30 years of experience working with beginning readers. A former university professor and elementary school teacher, he is currently an educational consultant in Florida.