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Right in the middle of your two-sided brain there is a bridge of tissue called the Corpus Callosum (CC), the only connection between the two sides. The CC’s job is to send information back and forth so that each side knows what the other is doing. The hemispheres have different specialties and the CC keeps them in touch with each other. It surely must be one of the busiest places on earth, with millions of tiny currents zipping back and forth every time you think a thought!

Occasionally an individual’s CC is slightly out of shape. When that happens, it causes messages travelling from the right to the left side to arrive late. This out-of-sync delivery from right to left was first discovered back in the seventies by a very smart psychiatrist, Dr. William Condon, who began to do some high-speed photography of dyslectic kids. To his amazement, he found that some were out-of-sync with themselves right down the midline of the body. When they started to blink, one eyelid started down just a fraction of a second before the other one. When they started to smile, one corner of the mouth started up just a fraction of a second before the other one. When they reached for something, one hand started to move just a fraction of a second before the other. The slow side was always the same and the delay was the same size for everything. The timing mismatch explained other oddities in dyslexia besides reading, such as left-right confusion (never outgrown, according to my adult dyslectic friends) certain kinds of math, and hyperactivity that looks like ADHD but isn’t. Today’s fancy brain scans still show the same time delay from right to left that Dr. Condon cleverly found in 1982 with just a low-tech, high-speed camera!

In the forties and fifties an educational disaster washed over this country called “Whole Language” or “The Sight Method” which promoted the nonsense that you should be taught to read by memorizing the looks of a word rather than understanding its phonics. Phonics went out the window, and a couple of decades later, when some enterprising souls compared reading skill among countries world-wide, the United States came in almost at the bottom, with only Sri Lanka worse!

In the Industrial Age when you could live comfortably with a factory job, reading skill didn’t matter much. In fact, in the early nineteen hundreds, the country’s high school dropout rate ran around 90 percent. But today’s Technological Age requires an education and good reading. “Whole Language” went out the window, phonics came in again and American kids learned to read. But the dyslectics didn’t, even though they were soaked in phonics. Suddenly they stuck out and became visible. Read More

Q. Should the schools strengthen programs in art and music, or should they stress the 3 r’s?

A. This question turns out to be a little like “Should parents concentrate on exercise and sleep routines for their child or should they stress nutrition?”  As you can see, in both cases, all three are necessary.  In each case, they represent three parts of the same whole.  Art and music are skills of communication and avenues for learning just like reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Each of these subject areas teaches a way to understand the complicated world in which we live.  Thanks to the highly regarded work of Howard Gardner, professor of psychology at Harvard University, we now acknowledge eight intelligences.  Musical/Rhythmic, Visual/Spatial, Verbal/Linguistic, and Logical/Mathematical make up four of the eight.  Dr. Gardner’s work has led the field of education away from the outdated concept of fixed intelligence based only on verbal and mathematical ability (IQ) and toward the creation of schools and programs that help children develop and flourish in music and art as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Another way to look at this is to re-focus music and art so that they enrich traditional ways to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Singing songs and putting ideas to music provides one of the best ways we know for fostering learning concepts, improving memory, and building vocabulary.  Listening to music, classical or other high quality melodies from various cultures, are linked to logical thinking and mathematical ability.  Drawing, painting, sculpting, and all kinds of crafts help develop eye-hand coordination. Understanding art, appreciating all aspects of its beauty and message, are associated with listening comprehension.

Music and art are social skills. They provide avenues for communication.  Singing and creating artistically are ways to express oneself with feeling.  Listening to music and being exposed to art appreciation are ways to understand information with feeling.  Besides giving and receiving messages, activities connected with these subjects transmit feelings.

Both music and art provide important ways to teach social studies. Songs and music are what make the study of another country come alive.  Their words, beliefs, ideas, and concepts are all embedded in musical tones and lyrics.   Art forms like pyramids, mosques, Japanese watercolor, or Indian garb all send a message about people, their differences and their similarities.  Specific people who come from specific places are the ones who generate colors, shapes, patterns, and figures.

Music and art also provide important ways to teach science. “The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone…” is one of many famous science songs.  “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes…” plays a well-known role too.  Making paper mache planets is one of many tried and tested science projects.  How about science fair entries?  I have never seen one yet that has not been artistic.

It is a limiting idea to consider focusing only on the three r’s in education. Motivation and enjoyment are basic to the learning process.  Take away stimulation and fun from education, and you take away learning.  Music and art need to be an integral part of life at school.  Each one has important contributions to make in its own right, and both together with the 3 r’s, form a whole much greater than its parts.  Education is the 3 r’s, art, and music, altogether.

Sally Goldberg, Ph.D. is a parenting specialist. Visit her on www.earlychildhoodnews.net/parenting-tips to get her most recent tips.

1. VIEW STRESS AS A SIGNAL: Feeling stress is not bad. It’s a signal to pay attention to something important happening outside. Miss this and the world outside (kids included) become your enemy, rather your partner.

2. SEE THE EVENTS THAT “COME TO YOU” AS “MEANT FOR YOU”: This mindset will generate a positive relationship between you and the events you face. Events are like pebbles thrown into your pond (self). Embracing events as meant for you is the opposite of the victim mindset, a mindset which leads us to “resist” and “resent” the things that come our way. Resistance generates more stress.

3. FEELINGS ARE INFORMATIVE, NOT DIRECTIVE: Welcome your feelings because they’re yours and they inform you about what’s important to you. Irritation, for instance, could point you to some important goal you need to accomplish. Focus on the message within your feelings. But don’t let your feelings lead you. You lead them by becoming solution-focused and going for the goal. Getting stuck on the feeling will increase your stress.

4. ACT ON THE JEWELS WITHIN YOUR FEELINGS: Every feeling reveals an aspect of you. Ever feel angry when you were excluded? The anger reveals your sensitivity to inclusion—that’s a jewel. Ever feel hurt when spoken to disrespectfully by your child? The hurt reveals how much you value respect—that’s a jewel. Feel the hurt, then speak respectfully while correcting your child. Live your jewel and your stress will diminish.

5. MANAGE BEHAVIOR, NOT THE MIND: Do not negotiate thoughts or feelings. We’ve all done it. Have you ever said things like: Oh, please don’t think that! or “You shouldn’t feel that way!” That’s mind control. Negotiate only actions: Will you do this? Are you willing to do this the next time this happens? You can ask children to do things even if they don’t feel like doing it. This is one of the most effective stress-busters in parenting.

Ramon Corrales is a life and leadership coach who has spent many years working in self-development, organizational development and team building. Born and raised in the Philippines, Corrales spent seven years as a monk in a Catholic monastery. He later spent a number of years as a family therapist, and is passionate about teaching others techniques for great leadership and successful relationships. This is the inspiration behind his SALT program (Secret Agents of Love & Transformation). He and his wife, Annabel, have two daughters and reside in the Greater Kansas City area. He plans to publish three more books in the SALT series.

While checking out at the grocery store in Philadelphia with two squirming toddlers, Jen Groover searched frantically in her purse for her wallet which was hiding behind various toys, diapers, makeup, car keys and her cell phone. “There has to be a better way to find stuff in my purse”, thought Jen.  Later that night while unloading her dishwasher, she looked at the silverware basket and had her eureka moment.  “Why can’t women’s purses contain a basket so that all the items are standing up.”  A few short months later, the Butler Bag was created; the first compartmentalized purse.

Groover observed something that all women experience, a purse jumbled with unfindable items but unlike the rest of us, she decided to do something about it and created her Butler Bag business. Groover became a “Mompreneur”- a mom who creates her own business balancing family and business demands. Perhaps you have fantasized about running your own show and wondered how to become a Mompreneur.  Here are the top five ways to become one.

1. Invent a new product. Necessity is the mother of invention and most new product ideas spring from someone’s observation of an unmet need.  To see what ideas you can come up with, as you go throughout your day constantly ask yourself, ‘what is it I wish that I had to make my life better’. Take notes on your phone of these ideas so you won’t forget them.  Nothing is too small to consider.  Pamela Haven kept noticing that heavier women were sweating under and between their breasts, something that many women surely noticed but all had ignored as business potential.  Not Haven, who describes her eureka moment:

“My husband and I had been lying in bed one night and I said that I wished I could find a way to make money and stay at home with the kids.  I kissed him good night and just as I did – BAM – literally, it was a light-bulb moment. I had taken a shower earlier and tucked my night gown up under my breasts, like it was ‘bra-liner’. I climbed right out of that bed and I was up until about 4:00am making notes as quick as they flooded my mind. That’s how Pambras, a new bra liner, was created “

Pambras has been in business now for several years and has expanded into several other products. What new idea can you invent?

2. Offer a service that you wish someone would offer you. Lots of busy people are willing to pay others to do what they previously had done themselves.   Sarah Covert thought just that when she created Sarah the Pet Sitter.  Today Covert can often be found walking through the neighborhoods of New Orleans with four dogs in tow or giving medicine to a skittish cat whose owner is away for the weekend.  What service can you provide to your friends and neighbors?

3. Consider what special talents you might have. All of us have some things that we are uniquely good at. When thinking of talents don’t restrict your thinking to the obvious ones like “I am a good singer.” Unleash your imagination and if you struggle to think what these talents might be, enlist a friend to brainstorm with you.  Then think about how you might create a business around this talent.  Nancy Hagan of Cincinnati knew that she was really good at organizing.  She became a Certified Productivity Specialist and created a business called Effective Day to help her clients become more organized and productive and as she says “free you to do what you do best”.   What talents can you turn into a business?

4. Think about a cause you really care about. Filomena Laforgia became passionate about educating others on how to deal with autism because she was going through the struggle with her own child.  She wondered how she could best help this cause and with her marketing background came up with the concept of selling items on the web where proceeds would go to help autism research.  But she didn’t stop there, “There are so many causes and so many people that want to buy products to help their favorite cause” thought Laforgia, “but no website to coordinate all of those causes and purchasers.”   From that passion she created Filanthropists.com, a website devoted to selling products to benefit a variety of excellent causes from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to Ovarian Cancer Research.  What cause do you really care about and how can you create a business around it?

5. Copy someone else’s good idea. Have you ever come across an idea and thought “wow, I wish I had thought of that”… or have you visited the perfect coffee shop in California and wonder if it would work in Wisconsin.  Well, just because you didn’t think of it first, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.  Copying another successful business idea is a great way to get started because you know it can work successfully.  As long as the market is big enough for another company and as long as you don’t copy any proprietary information (think particular recipe or special packaging) then there is no reason you can’t do the same thing.  There is a reason that McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s all exist, all doing the same thing. A good idea that works for one can work for others.  What great idea have you seen that you could copy?

For those women craving independence, flexibility and the desire to be the boss, becoming a Mompreneur may just be the right fit.

Julie Shifman is the founder of Act Three, a company that helps women across the country reach their goals in their next stage of life. A sought-after inspirational speaker and certified coach, she is the author of “Act Three: Create the Life You Want After Your First Career and Full-time Motherhood”.

In a perfect world, summertime is an idyllic stretch of freedom to enjoy swimming, boating, barbecues, and hanging out with friends. But for many teens, it’s an open invitation to experiment – with danger.

Areas of Concern for Parents of Teenagers to Watch For Depression and confusion may be kept at bay by the daily structure of classes, after-school activities, homework, and for some, daily family activities. During the unstructured time of summer, teenagers may become overwhelmed with feelings of depression and poor self-esteem and confused about where to seek help. Without help, teenagers – more frequently than any other age group – may begin to contemplate suicide as an answer to their problems.

Confidence and body issues can prevent teens from enjoying summer. Many teens will not have the emotional confidence to seek out friends or the body confidence to join others in summer activities such as swimming. Loneliness and a sense of inadequacy may drive teenagers toward destructive behavior.

Drugs and alcohol are substances teens may experiment with to make them feel better. Usage is often a social activity, and it becomes a way for teens to feel like they belong somewhere. The group bonds over the need to feel protected while engaging in an illegal and potentially dangerous activity. Because alcohol or drugs may initially offer an escape from painful feelings, it is easy for teenagers to become dependent.

Boredom can be a motivator for thrill-seeking activities such as reckless driving, dangerous stunts, or even criminal behavior. Teenagers are often impulsive, and they do not consider the consequences of their actions. This greatly increases the possibility of serious accidents and/or legal trouble.

Sexual experimentation is more likely during the unstructured summer. Warm weather offers more outdoor places for teens to get together in privacy – even in city parks. Peer pressure to have sex can begin as early as junior high school, and it often confuses and negatively impacts a teen’s self-image. Either having sex before a teen is ready, or refusing to have sex, can have a negative impact on an already shaky sense of self-worth and confidence. There is also the risk of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. AIDS is the sixth leading cause of death among teenagers ranging from 15 to 24 years of age.

Make a Plan To Help Your Teenager Stay Out of Trouble

Parent should strive to assess the possibility of their teenagers getting into trouble during summer. Help your teenagers become educated about the risks associated with drugs, alcohol, and sexual activity. Seek out the proper resources, and then create a plan that will help teenagers avoid these dangers while at the same time develop their confidence and feelings of self-worth.

Another way to keep your adolescent out of trouble this summer is to enroll them in a structured program, such as summer school or a wilderness program, that can help your child get a jump on the next school year or work through some issues that may be holding them back from enjoying a healthy and productive life. Learn more about summer academic programs and wilderness therapy programs.

Dr. Rick Meeves, Ph.D., LMFT, Director of Clinical Services for Adolescents for CRC Health Group, the nation’s largest provider of behavioral health and addiction treatment services.

Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., CRC Health Group is the most comprehensive network of specialized behavioral healthcare services in the nation. CRC offers the largest array of personalized treatment options, allowing individuals, families and professionals to choose the most appropriate treatment setting for their behavioral, addiction, weight management and therapeutic education needs. CRC is committed to making its services widely and easily available, while maintaining a passion for delivering advanced treatment.  Since 1995, CRC has been helping individuals and families reclaim and enrich their lives.  For more information, visit www.crchealth.com or call (877) 637-6237.

Are you a parent to a child with special needs? Have you been trying to help your child do something he or she can’t do, or corrected them over and over again to end up with little or no progress, both you and your child experiencing ample stress in the process? When that happens your child isn’t learning what you’re trying to teach them and most likely they are learning what you do not want them to learn – the patterns that lead them to failure.

One of the most important discoveries of the past 30 years of my work with children who have special needs—working with everything from autism to genetic disorders—is the amazingly positive results that become possible when we shift our attention from the child’s limitations to the child’s brain and from trying to get the child to do what it can’t do, what it “should” be doing, to helping that child’s brain get the information it requires to be able to do new things. To clarify what I mean by this, think of your brain as the CEO of you. It manages all that you do—physically, emotionally and intellectually. For the healthy child, as well as the child with special challenges, the information his or her “CEO” brain needs in order to learn something new does not come from directly trying to perform and practice what it doesn’t yet have the ability to perform. When I tell that to parents, they often ask me with bewilderment in their voice: “but if I’m not going to put my child sitting, standing, or keep repeating words they’re unable to speak, how are they ever going to learn to do these things”?  My answer to them is that children begin learning to sit, stand, or talk long before they can perform these skills. The necessary information for skills to form comes to the brain from many small and varied movements and experiences that may seem completely unrelated to the final accomplishment. With the healthy child these movements are always within the range of what he or she can already do at the time. The brain of the child with special challenges requires the same process to be able to learn and thrive!

Here’s what we need to realize: for the brain to get all the information it requires to successfully learn how to organize movement, thought, emotions and feelings depends on all of the child’s functions and capabilities working well to begin with. That includes the muscles, the bones, the joints, and of course the brain itself. So, for example, if the arm of an infant is not doing the typical random movements it normally would because of an injury to the nerves of that arm, the brain will not get the information it requires in order to learn to control that arm well, if at all. (You can watch a video of an 8 week old learning to move her paralyzed arm for the first time: http://youtu.be/V7t_DqrsIcE)

What is everyone’s natural and intuitive urge to do at such time? I’m sure you have the answer: to try and “fix” that arm. To try and make it do what it is not doing ¾ stretch, stimulate and exercise that arm with the hope that it will “learn” to do those movements on their own. Will imposing these movements on her arm result in her brain getting the information it requires to move that arm well on her own? Will trying to get her to do what she cannot do provide her brain with the missing information? As counter intuitive as it may appear, the answer in most cases is that it won’t. It is way too limited! The healthy infant does thousands upon thousands of small, highly varied movements that are not the final skill, such as holding a toy in their hands, before they get there. It is this flood of seemingly irrelevant information that the child with special challenges also needs.

The same is true for behavioral and cognitive challenges that often children diagnosed with ADHD or Autism have. Trying to impose the final “correct” behavior will usually deny the brain the rich and varied information it needs in order to evolve the missing skills.

How can we provide the child’s brain with this flood of necessary information? First we need to back off from trying to “fix” the child and instead focus on connecting with him or her. The Anat Baniel Method, which evolved from a lifetime of hands-on work with thousands of children with special needs, provides the tools that help parents and caregivers connect with the child and at the same time wake up the child’s brain and flood it with information it has to have for that child to be able to successfully move from the impossible to the possible. This is not some kind of magic or esoteric system but is founded on scientific principles that have been demonstrated over and over again by leading researchers the world over. Science has shown how the brain possesses a remarkable ability to create alternative solutions to physical and mental disabilities when given the information to work with. Through the spontaneous process of differentiation (discerning increasingly finer differences), the brain creates billions upon billions of new neural connections; these are the very connections that every child’s brain needs to figure out how to stand, walk, talk, think, and do everything he or she will ever learn to do. Read More

A recent rash of news stories highlights the positive in society’s youngest members: “Child Saves Kids from Bus Crash;” “Child Saves His Brother from Possible Abduction;” “Child Saves Family from House Fire.”

But all too often, the news involving children indicates a dangerous lack of morality: 7- and 8-year-olds stealing cars; a 9-year-old’s recent shooting of a school classmate; a 12-year-old charged with armed robbery.

There is something especially senseless in reading about small children committing crimes. We wanted to be part of a ‘positive push’ in the right direction.

The younger the child, the more impressionable they are. We wanted to help busy parents scrambling to make ends meet teach children empathy, compassion, environmental awareness and other values.

I don’t think parents are bad. But with all the economic worries, the job losses and home foreclosures, many are focused on working and worrying. It’s hard to also be thinking, ‘What value will I teach my child today?’

These tips for parents can help positively shape children:

• Promote a love for nature: Are your kids outdoors much? Parents who are busying shuttling their sons and daughters from one building to another may overlook the benefits of the great outdoors. Wilderness, however, has a therapeutic effect on indoor dwellers. Spending time in nature also helps children learn about their place in the world and the value of all the life that shares space with us.

• Show the value of teamwork: Working together toward a common goal doesn’t always come naturally to children – or adults. Many youngsters learn teamwork through sports, which is good but almost always includes a competitive element. It’s important for children to experience the added benefits of creating, problem-solving and getting chores done as a team. Parents should look for opportunities to point out their children’s great teamwork.

• Make sure they appreciate safety: No good parent wants to unnecessarily frighten their children, but carelessness leads to bad habits, injuries and opportunities for others to do them harm. The best medicine for any problem is prevention. Remember: Don’t take for granted that your young child knows what’s safe and what’s not. Some years ago, someone taught you that stoves can burn your hand – even though you can’t remember who or when it was.

• Build their confidence with at least one skill: Remember what it’s like to be 4 years old? Very young children come into this world with no previous experience, which means their brains are hungry for know-how. Knowledge and skills to a child are like water for a thirsty man in the desert.

• Kindness counts: It is one thing to teach kids the old idiom that one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar. But children should also know that people who make kindness a habit tend to be happier; there is an inherent joy in helping others.

I understand parents are busy earning a living to support their children. But who you raise in the process makes all the difference to the future world.

Debbie Burns and Patty Cockrell are sisters and best friends. They were determined to instill honest and wholesome values in their children after establishing their families. Deeply affected by the bad news of the world, they decided to promote a better experience for children. “Tukie Tales: A New Beginning for a Better Tomorrow” (www.tukietales.com) is a series of five children’s books designed to help parents teach young children important values. The “Tukie Tales” series is written with compassion and love for all of the world’s children in the hope of making a positive difference.

As the world engages in a global homework debate, there are many parents whose major concern is not public policy, but what will happen at home tonight. They are not Tiger Moms, but ordinary parents who simply want the best for their children. These parents start out with the full intention of supporting the teachers and their children’s schools. Yet, something goes wrong along the way as they and their children fall into a homework trap.

The problem starts in elementary school. The notes come home, and the parents get “the call.”  They meet with the teacher and make plans to make sure everyone is on the same page. Before long, the cast of characters grows. By middle school, there are several teachers, the disciplinarian and the nurse, all fretting over what these children do not do. Their parents feel pressured to oversee their work, as they also feel criticized as if they’ve done something wrong. These parents would do anything to help their children, yet nothing they do reaps results. Soon, they realize that the efforts they are making are actually doing more harm than good.

The key misconception about homework-trapped children is what I call the “myth of motivation.” These children are viewed as lazy and unmotivated, as if they are different from the other children who would rather play than do their homework. There are reasons why these children don’t do their work, and it’s not because they lack motivation. Rather, they have “under the radar” learning problems. Minor differences in learning capabilities can have major implications on the work that’s sent home, much more than it has on the work done in class. The most important issue is the child’s work pace. No one would question that a slow running child truly wants to win the race, yet we somehow believe that homework-trapped children lack the desire to get their work done.

We know that people don’t spend large amounts of time engaging in tasks they don’t do well. Yet, homework-trapped children are made to struggle for hours on end to get everything done.  These children would be far better off if they were asked to work for a fixed amount of time (perhaps ten minutes per night per grade), than to fall into an abyss of working all night to get every worksheet done. The child, who is forced to keep on working without boundaries, will predictably learn how to avoid. Excessive homework pressures teach children to lie, forget, argue, and procrastinate. This eventually brings in the child study team, not to deal with learning problems, but because the child’s behavior has been bad. With that, the child may get sent to a different class or an alternative school where, voila, homework is no longer required. It’s an odd turn of events that these homework-trapped children, who could have succeeded with some homework relief, only get that relief after they’ve acted out.

Because of this, I offer three very simple adjustments that are crucial for homework-trapped children, and which, frankly, I think should be policy for all. They are:

Time bound homework. Just like school starts and stops by the clock, define homework as a fixed period of time. See what the child can do in a reasonable amount of time and work with that child on using the time well.

Reduced penalties. Zeros factored in twenty-five percent of the grade is too harsh of a penalty to alter behavior. Lesser consequences will prove more effective in both mobilizing the child and allowing the parent to approach the issue calmly.

Respect lines of authority. Teachers are in charge of their classrooms. Parents should tread lightly on telling them what to do. Parents are the people in charge of their homes. Teachers should not tell parents how to organize their homes. In the end, when decisions are to be made about behaviors in the home (i.e. homework), the parent needs to be the one with the final say.

I am aware of the controversy abounding around the world regarding how much homework children should get. It’s an important debate but not the one I’m concerned with today. I’ll leave that to teachers, the experts in education, to figure out what makes the most sense. But in developing their models, it is critical for teachers to understand that homework assignments are using borrowed ground. Homework requires the tacit permission of the parents to allow it in their homes. While most parents will support the school in what it asks, they also need the power to withdraw that permission, if needed, without consequence to their child’s education.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice. A member of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Goldberg has been a featured expert in top media outlets including The Los Angeles Daily News, LAFamily.com, and The Washington Post. For more information, please visit www.thehomeworktrap.com.

10. Ticks crawl up. Ticks don’t jump, fly, or drop from trees onto your head and back. If you find one attached there, it most likely latched onto your foot or leg and crawled up over your entire body.

9. All ticks (including deer ticks) come in small, medium and large sizes

8. Ticks can be active even in the winter. That’s right! Deer Ticks in particular are not killed by freezing temperatures, and will be active any winter day that the ground is not snow-covered or frozen.

7. Ticks carry disease-causing microbes. Tick-transmitted infections are more common these days than in past decades. With explosive increases in deer populations, extending even into semi-urban areas in the eastern and western U.S., the trend is for increasing abundance and geographic spread of deer ticks and Lone Star ticks; and scientists are finding an ever-increasing list of disease-causing microbes transmitted by these ticks: Lyme disease bacteria, Babesia protozoa, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and other rickettsia, even encephalitis-causing viruses, and possibly Bartonella bacteria. Back in the day, tick bites were more of an annoyance but now a bite is much more likely to make you sick.

6. Only deer ticks transmit Lyme disease bacteria. The only way to get Lyme disease is by being bitten by a deer tick or one of its “cousins” found around the world.

5. For most tick-borne diseases, you have at least 24 hours to find and remove a feeding tick before it transmits an infection. Even a quick daily tick check at bath or shower time can be helpful in finding and removing attached ticks before they can transmit an infection. Lyme disease bacteria take at least 24 hours to invade the tick’s saliva.

4. Deer tick nymphs look like a poppy seed on your skin. And with about 1 out of 4 nymphal deer ticks carrying the Lyme disease spirochete and other nasty germs in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and upper mid-western U.S., it’s important to know what you’re really looking for. They’re easy to miss, their bites are generally painless, and they have a habit of climbing up (under clothing) and biting in hard-to-see places.

3. The easiest and safest way to remove a tick is with a pointy tweezer. Using really pointy tweezers, it’s possible to grab even the poppy-seed sized nymphs right down next to the skin. The next step is to simply pull the tick out like a splinter.

2. Clothing with built-in tick repellent is best for preventing tick bites. An easy way to avoid tick bites and disease is to wear clothing (shoes, socks, shorts or pants, and shirt) with Insect Shield® tick repellent built-in. www.insectshield.com www.insectshield.com/work www.insectshield.com/health

1. Tick bites and tick-borne diseases are completely preventable. There’s really only one way you get a tick-transmitted disease and that’s from a tick bite. Reducing tick abundance in your yard, wearing tick repellent clothing every day, treating pets every month and getting into a habit of doing a quick body scan are all great actions for preventing tick bites.

Courtesy of www.tickencounter.org. Insect Shield’s EPA-registered technology converts clothing and gear into effective and convenient insect protection. The repellency is long-lasting and appropriate for use by the entire family with no restrictions for use. For more information, visit www.insectshield.com

Let’s face it, sometimes fathers feel a bit left out. They may feel a little unsure of their abilities in the parenting department, and women, like many other species, can smell fear.  Not only do we moms want to save a father from feeling bad, we also want to prevent as much fussing as possible, by both the father and the child. So we step in.  The problem is, sometimes we don’t step out again. Having a mom is great, but children need the special perspective that a dad can offer.  As a dad, here are the things that us moms want you to know to feel confident about your parenting abilities:

1. Don’t be afraid to be alone with your child. If your child is in the baby stage, the most important thing to remember is this: babies cry sometimes.  You cannot always prevent it.  So, rather than being intimidated by it, go through a mental checklist:  Is the baby hungry, tired, hot, cold, or in need of a diaper change?  If you’ve tried to fix the above issues and the crying continues, try a change of scenery (and bring the baby with you). If possible, walk outside, several laps around the house, or up and down the street.  If you’re not sure how to work the stroller, don’t use it. You will eventually succeed in calming your baby.  And, in doing so, you will feel an incredible sense of pride in yourself and your “dad instinct.”

2. Children love to cuddle with their dads. You guys have some kind of kid-calming mechanism implanted in you somehow, I am convinced.  You’re warm, you’re calm, you talk in a low-pitched voice, and you can sit for hours, snuggling and watching baseball.  Revel in the fact that you have a talent that mom may not have – the snuggling factor.  Kids often seek mom out for emergencies (no matter how trivial), but if you are open to it, they will seek you out for snuggling, for comfort, for security.  You lucky dog, you.

3. Though mom may have it all under control, you need to be “in the loop.” Find out what disciplinary actions have been taken while you were away.  What’s the back story?  It is imperative that you and mom work together to raise your child.  You need to know what has happened in the day, good and bad, so that any transfer of responsibility is seamless. Children know when we are uninformed and they use it to their advantage.  You can count on that.  So, if you are not told what has happened, please ask.  Your competence depends on it.

4. Your words mean more than you will ever know. Dads tend not to understand how important they are. You may not have had quite as much experience with children as mom has, but your words of comfort, support, love, and pride will stay with your child forever.  Choose your words carefully, for they carry with them the self-esteem that your child will draw upon as she grows.  Don’t underestimate the power of your words. What you say does matter.

5. Play. You work a lot, so when you are with your kids, play. Stay vigilant, be safe, choose age appropriate activities, but gosh darn it, play.  It is the best way to bond with children, because it equalizes you, at least for the time that you are playing.  Children “let their guard down” a little when they play, and you may learn how your child is feeling about things as you play.  Dads tend to be pretty good listeners, so as you play, if you notice your child beginning to open up, just listen.  You don’t have to give advice.  In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. Every now and then, say, “Do you feel like you need any help with that situation?” and take it from there. Playing opens the doors to having fun, but it also shows your child that you are willing to be there for him. Read More