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Flame Retardants in Breasts and Babies

By Andrea | Published: May 20, 2012

Just experienced a trifecta of new-to-me surprising info about flame retardants. Here’s the gist.

“The average American baby is born with 10 fingers, 10 toes and the highest recorded levels of flame retardants among infants in the world.” according to Chicago Tribune. They go on to say that, contrary to industry positioning, flame retardants don’t work, and there is mounting evidence that they are unsafe for humans (specifically, cancer, reproductive problems).

One flame retardant, chlorinated Tris, was removed from children’s pajamas in the 70s due to research about how it can alter brain development in fetuses, but still appears in couches and nursing pillows without warning labels (according to Kristoff in the New York Times).

Chicago Tribune: Flame Retardants in the Living Room

Flame Retardants Hard to Avoid (from Chicago Tribune)

Florence Williams, author and reporter, tested her breast milk for toxins. “It turns out that our breasts are almost like sponges, the way they can soak up some of these chemicals, especially the ones that are fat-loving — the ones [that] tend to accumulate in fat tissue,” Williams tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “Unfortunately, the breast is also masterful at converting these molecules into food in the way of breast milk.”

Williams found “average to high levels” of flame retardants in her breast milk.  That said, she didn’t stop breastfeeding, saying a) that formula may also be subject to contaminants, and b) she thought the benefits of nursing outweighed the risks:

“We now know that there are substances in breast milk … that are not digestible by infants. So what are they doing there? It turns out, they’re digestible by beneficial bacteria. So over millions of years, the mother has been creating a substance that will recruit useful bacteria into her infant’s gut, and this sets her infant up for life. So as much as breast milk is a food, we also now understand that it’s also a medicine.” [Fresh Air interview, May 16, 2012]

The gist of the Williams’ interview, the Chicago Tribune report, and Kristoff’s call-to-action are that public policy changes, and/or awareness-raising to lead to industry changes, are needed to reduce the prevalence of flame retardants in our homes, our bodies, our environment. They are as almost one voice saying it’s hard (perhaps impossible) to avoid consuming flame retardants personally since products are not labeled and usage is so prevalent.

However, some suggestions on how to avoid flame retardants in the home from Heather Stapleton, an environmental chemist at Duke and a mom (via the Chicago Tribune):

  • Wash hands, especially after touching dryer lint or playing on the floor (flame retardants are in house dust)
  • Stapleton also personally chose to:
    • Remove carpeting (as it tends to collect more dust)
    • Buy organic-material mattresses for her children (after testing the foam ones the daycare was using)

Here are sources for further reading/listening:

Your thoughts are welcome! Do you think flame retardants is the “new” BPA?

Posted in Babies | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

First Parents Guild Ad, Ever

By Andrea | Published: October 9, 2011

Tada. Our very first placed advertisement will appear, in print, in one of our favorite parenting publications this winter – Brain, Child Magazine. In fact, a version of the ad is already live on their site. We’re super excited. We must be real, right, if we’re advertising? ;)

By the way, if you don’t yet have a Brain, Child subscription and want one – follow this link to subscribe and one of 2 good things may happen. Either, if a few other Guildmembers / PG readers subscribe, we may be able to ask for a group discount. Or, if 16 Guildmembers subscribe, Brain, Child may be willing to comp our ad. Or both. So, subscribe, get a great magazine for not very much money, and let us know in the comments below or via email  (blog@parentsguild.com) if you’re doing so. Thanks!

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Today we also reached 400 fans on Facebook. Thanks so much for all your support!

Posted in Parenting, Site | Leave a comment

[video] Isaac Asimov on the Internet & Education

By Andrea | Published: September 7, 2011

This is totally captivating. Way back in 1988, Asimov saw the potential of the Internet to transform education – personalize it, improve the quality of it, engage us as learners in a 1:1 way…

“People think of education as something that they finish.” Asimov saw the Internet as changing that.

It seems the world is catching up with Asimov, both technology-wise and, suddenly, in terms of thought leadership on education. If you haven’t already, see our previous posts here on the Khan Academy and Bill Gates.

What do you think? Can the Internet help transform learning (even more than Google Search and Wikipedia already have)? Is it already?

Posted in schools, video | Leave a comment

Growing Child: What might your mom tell you if you asked?

By Andrea | Published: September 1, 2011

Some suggestions from Ms. Gestwicki and her “Gaggle of Grandmas” we’ve adopted, some are new, all bear repeating and re-posting ;)

A gaggle of grandmas
By Carol Gestwicki

What do you get when you have a gaggle of grandmas? A lot of thoughtful advice, that’s what.

I recently asked several of my friends what insights they would like to pass along—advice for today’s parents, or what they have learned or what they would do differently if they knew then what they know now. (One of them in fact commented that her daughters rarely asked for advice, and when they did, they really just wanted her to listen.) So, on the assumption that you also are not asking your mothers (or grandmothers, aunts, friends or neighbors) for advice (which I suspect none of us did at the time either) let me pass along to you some of their wisdom.

The first idea, echoed by several, is to relax and enjoy it now.

  • One grandma commented that if she knew how fleeting the new baby time was, she would have settled into it more fully. She would have had fewer commitments in the outside world, trying to balance work, childcare and other responsibilities, and worrying whether she was doing it “right.”
  • Another grandma described this as rushing around doing the things she thought she “should” do, and observed that parents need to stop “shoulding” themselves.
  • This means slowing down to savor the moments more (though she did allow as how this was probably a skill we do better in our 60’s.)
  • One grandma said she would try to resist the pressure she felt to return to work so early. Yet another grandma said that she would worry less about a clean house.

So, the first big idea is to relax and enjoy the wonders of a child’s daily development.

An idea related to the fleetingness of it all was expressed by the grandma who said that she would remember that every stage finally comes to an end:

  • Diapers;
  • not sleeping through the night;
  • the terrible two’s; and
  • even teenage “snarkiness.”

She said that understanding would help her relax and enjoy it all.

One grandma commented that she had not harnessed the kids’ wonderful energy and enthusiasm for raking, gardening, meal preparation, and other responsibilities that she had thought were hers alone.

One grandmother’s insight was that, while structure and schedule are important, what she most remembers as particularly happy times with her children was the unexpected “holidays” such as snow days or illness, when the routine was broken, so she could relax and just play and enjoy the children.

Another important idea was spending time with each child individually. One grandma said she has learned from her own children’s parenting about the importance of small events with just one child, whether a backyard campout or a small adventure trip out in nature, or even just cooking or doing a craft with a child.

A grandma pointed out that she would have kept reading to her children longer, even after they could read on their own, feeling that continuing to share books provides great opportunities for communication.

And one last thought for you from one of the gaggle of grandmas: She wishes that she had helped her children call their grandparents more often, just to chat, knowing how much that now means to her as a grandma.

Carol Gestwicki has worked with children and families in schools in the U.S. and Canada and taught in an early childhood program in Charlotte, N.C. for over 25 years. A wife, mother and grandmother, she currently works as an early childhood consultant and writes for parents and teachers.

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["Growing Parent" is a feature of Growing Child, used by permission of the copyright owner Growing Child, Inc. For a free sample of Growing Child timed to the monthly age of your child go to GrowingChild.com.]

 

Posted in Growing Child, Parenting | Leave a comment

Further thoughts on Jeff Bezos vs State of CA

By Andrea | Published: July 15, 2011

On thinking about this a bit more after all the awesome points raised in the blog comments and on Hacker News… it occurs to me that as a consumer – I buy an item from my house, it arrives at my house – to me, the point of sale is my house. It doesn’t matter to me where the retail company’s server or headquarters are, it doesn’t matter where any sites I visited along the way happen to be physically located, what matters is where I “swiped” my credit card, and where I receive my item.

By that logic (if that might be called logic!), Amazon’s not responsible for where its affiliates happen to be. Amazon’s responsible for where its customers are and what the tax law happens to be in that location. That’s where fair competition rules are being violated with Amazon getting a free ride.

California shouldn’t be able to claim sales tax on a sale that happens between a Seattle company and a  customer in Miami. But Florida should, as the competition is happening on its turf between Miami brick-and-mortar retailers and retailers all over the internet.

Thoughts?

Posted in Site | 1 Comment

Amazon, how could you dump us? An open letter to Jeff Bezos

By Andrea | Published: July 13, 2011

Amazon Sad LogoDear Jeff,

My husband and co-founder Steve and I have been long-time fans & customers of Amazon. I love what your company brought to online retail, and I love what you’ve brought to our home in particular – books, children’s toys, electronic devices, the kindle, streaming movies, the Amazon Visa card. For awhile you were even keeping us stocked in diapers, with new diapers arriving almost faster than we would realize we were running low.

When we launched Parents Guild we transferred our love of Amazon as parents into a love of Amazon as small social-good website creators and business owners. 100% of Parents Guild’s meager revenue comes from users clicking on links to Amazon in our posts and buying something.

Well, that should be past tense. It seems California decided to enact a tax on sales from affiliates in the state of CA, and your company is so upset and petty about it that you dumped us the minute the law passed. You sent us this letter:

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective.

The thing is, Jeff, that we are Californians. Paying taxes to our state benefits us and our family. If we didn’t have you, we would shop more at local retailers that DO pay taxes in California and DO reinvest in our local area. The more successful you are, the less our money stays in the area and the fewer funds we have for our local infrastructure.

I understand our messed up legislature may have (ack!) overstepped the Constitution here by attempting to tax interstate commerce, but it really does seem that you’ve been profiting unfairly on some outdated laws – why should businesses that do pay local taxes be forced to compete with businesses like yours that don’t, especially now that you can get me the same item instantly? Should we abolish all sales tax or level the playing field and find a legitimate, business-friendly way for everyone to pay it?

And why should your disagreement with my state government cause you to reneg on our mutually-profitable relationship? More to the point, if I was really depending on revenues from sales I sent your way to keep Parents Guild running, is grandstanding for political points and a couple of dollars in lost profit worth shutting me down (and all my small, independent, family-supporting, social-good-making peers that depend on the Amazon Affiliate ecosystem you created)?

Rather than slamming the little guy, your loyal customers and partners, in hopes we’d take up arms against our legislature, couldn’t you have considered just charging the requested sales tax and taking up the battle in court with the people you actually have a disagreement with – the ones who can do something about it?

Best regards,
Andrea Klein Lacy
co-founder, Parents Guild

UPDATE (4/22/13): And now, after years of lobbying against online sales tax, it seems Amazon WANTS to pay sales tax. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/22/178407898/why-amazon-supports-an-online-sales-tax-bill?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130422 And this is how business (and consumers and taxpayers) are played, folks.

Posted in Site | 21 Comments

the flexitarians

By Andrea | Published: April 12, 2011

I came across this story on the blog of a good college friend. I read it, left it, and found it wouldn’t let me go; it spoke so elegantly to my own experience with parenting. With permission of the author, I’m reposting here. Enjoy! – andrea

THE FLEXITARIANS

by Caroline Cummins

During my freshman year of college, I had an intense dream in which I was dying in a hospital emergency room while trying to give birth. The dream shifted tracks, as dreams will, and suddenly I was outside the OR, watching the doctors, looking at my swollen and yet also shrunken body, and I knew that I was dead. The baby was gone, whisked away by doctors, and my body was left alone on a gurney.

Another doctor happened to be standing next to me, watching through the porthole windows in the doors of the OR. Nonplussed by the fact that I was looking at my dead self, I asked him, “Will I be OK?”

He nodded. “Oh, sure, you’re going to be just fine,” he assured me.

I woke up scared and bewildered, and mentioned it later to a sophomore who happened to be a psychology major. He laughed and said, “Oh, that dream is so obvious!” (He was a much wiser, older sophomore, of course.) I demanded that he explain what he meant, and he replied, “It’s a typical freshman dream — you’re leaving your old life behind and starting a new one, so the new you is being born. And you’re scared to say goodbye to the old you and meet the new you. But you will, and it will be fine, which is why the doctor told you so.”

Neither of us, at that point, had become parents, so we didn’t know that the first year or so of having a child is analogous to the first year or so of college. The old you has vanished, and the new you has to figure out a new way of living.

One of the biggest challenges, both in college and in parenthood, is learning how to think anew. The first summer we had Delphine, we made a date to meet some friends at a farmers’ market. We got ready (a process that, then and now, can take up to an hour) and headed out the door to a sunny Saturday and the discovery that vandals had smashed our rear windshield in the night.

Once upon a time, I would’ve willingly tackled this bother along with the logistics of trying to get to the market without a car. But as a parent of a four-month-old, my brain basically shut down.

“We can’t go,” I said flatly.

“Of course we can,” answered Caleb, brilliant husband that he is. “We’ll just take the bus.”

The bus! What a good idea. But then my slow brain caught up. “We can’t buy anything if we take the bus,” I countered. “How will we carry home several flats of berries on the bus?”

“We won’t buy berries today,” said Caleb.

And that was that. We caught the bus, met our friends, and bought very little, all of which got crushed on the crowded bus ride home. We had problem-solved!

But it had all felt so very arduous. Of necessity, new parents have to be flexible in new ways, working from minute to minute to make sure their child is happy, safe, clean, fed, watered, entertained, challenged, and the like. And yet this flexibility is not a skill most of us have ever had to practice.

A few months ago, I asked a friend, a professional musician with a son about Delphine’s age, how she managed to find time to practice. “Oh, I don’t practice anymore,” she answered. “I don’t need to.”

I was slightly dazed by this, until I found myself doing a phone interview for work and, literally, phoning it in. Not that I didn’t conduct a good, thorough interview; I simply realized that, because I’ve done so many phone interviews as a working journalist, I don’t have to practice them. I can just perform them.

Which, in a way, is the single greatest argument for postponing parenthood until you’ve worked at a chosen career for a while. When that baby shows up, it’s easier if you can run your career on autopilot for a while as you learn the new gig of parenthood. Parenting — a different way of being flexible in the world — is the skill you now have to practice, and learning it takes all your concentration.

Of course, not everybody who goes to college finds it satisfying or even finishes it. And, sadly, the same is true of parenting. We all need reassurance as parents, because we all know we might become those parents who flunk out, whose kids are swallowed by the foster-care system or worse. I never liked practicing music, after all; it was plenty boring, and I had plenty of temper tantrums about it. But I can’t apply shirking and violence to child-rearing, much as I might sometimes wish to. I’m just hoping for a passing grade.

Posted in Babies, Parenting | 1 Comment

Finally!

By Andrea | Published: April 7, 2011

We’ve finally freakinlutely unveiled our redesigned website. The graphics have changed (a lot), the functionality largely hasn’t. Go on, check it out. Let us know what you think.

Some things that might trip you up a bit at first:

  • there’s no more static homepage describing the mission of the site, we’re just dropping you straight into the latest questions. We figure that’s where you want to be anyway.
  • we’ve assigned all guildmembers a random profile pic based on the “parenting’s for the birds” theme of the new site. you’re stuck with whatever you’ve been given at the moment but we’ll be rolling out new functionality to choose or upload a new profile picture soon.
  • we’ve introduced a way to say thanks to someone for their question or answer (responding to resounding requests for exactly that). Please use it with abandon.

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A big – arms outstretched as wide as they can go – thanks to Thi Truong Avrahami and Todd Linkner for their highly-talented mission-critical help bringing this project to life. It takes a village. Or a Thi and a Todd.

Sincerely,
steve & andrea

Posted in Process, Site | 3 Comments

[video] Revolutionizing Education?

By Andrea | Published: March 15, 2011

“First time I smiled doing a derivative”
- a comment on one of Khan Academy’s videos on YouTube

Salman Khan speaks at the TED conference and talks about much more than a few educational videos. He calls for teachers to consider “flipping the traditional classroom” — give students video lectures to watch at their own pace, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help [a variation of what Bill Gates suggests to the Governors].

On Traditional Education: “Imagine learning to ride a bicycle… you can’t quite stop… I stamp you with a C… now ride a unicycle.”

“Here I was, an analyst at a hedge fund, it was very strange to do something of social value,” Khan says self-deprecatingly about his beginnings in using YouTube to educate. All I can say is “So glad you’re here, Khan.”

Posted in schools | 1 Comment

[preso] Flip the Curve: Getting better student outcomes with less $

By Andrea | Published: March 14, 2011

As my son approaches kindergarten I’ve been doing my best to make sense of the various school options in our area. And, because I’m anal to the 10th degree, this involves touring whatever we can, accosting neighboring parents and friends spontaneously and sporadically for info, and trying to get past the (middlin’) test score valuation of our local public elementary school to find out what it’s really like.

Too, I’ve been scouring the web to find out what’s our public school system like these days, why is everyone always complaining about it and all the news (and trendy documentaries) negative, and what can I do to help fix it.

Here’s today’s find – a fantastic presentation by Bill Gates to the state governors about “flipping the curve” (currently the curve is more spending with flat outcomes, and of course we all want to “flip it” to better outcomes with flat or reduced spending):

Bill Gates' presentation to the National Governors Association

Well worth watching, but here’s the cliff notes because – really – what parent has extra time? Some points Bill makes:

  • The best teachers can teach 2 years of material in one year – which is dramatically better outcome than the worst teachers. Asking students 2 QUESTIONS about their teacher predicts teacher effectiveness:
    1. Does the teacher use the time in the classroom well?
    2. When you’re confused about something, does your teacher help you understand it better?

    (Personally, I like this idea. Waiting for Superman emphasized that all the teachers and students know who are the poor performing teachers. It was certainly true in my high school 20 years ago. Yet we pretend the only reasonable way to measure teachers is to test the h*** out of our students, which we know does nothing in and of itself to improve education.)

  • Currently, teacher pay rests heavily on seniority (27%) and advanced degrees (7%), and not at all on WORKLOAD (hours worked, or number of students taught) or RESULTS. Unfortunately, neither seniority nor advanced degrees correlate with student success.
  • Number one priority to improve education outcomes: MEASURE and SUPPORT effective teaching. Bill draws an analogy between other industries – e.g., sports, technology – and says it’s easy to see that the best in the field today are better or more effective than their counterparts 50 years ago. But in teaching we can’t say that. Because there have been no durable, applied measures of teaching success, and no effective means to help teachers improve and educators to share demonstrably better approaches. It’s hard but critical to measure (and support / reward) success.
  • Interestingly, he also recommends LIFTING CAPS ON CLASS SIZE. Moving classrooms from 20 -> 26 students in class, say, a 30% increase, and giving some of the savings directly to the teacher for the increased workload, and making sure the teachers you’re retaining are the more effective teachers, means flat or reduced costs with immediate benefits to students. Class size higher than 30 in younger grades has been shown to have a detrimental effect, but under that number should be possible. (I’d like to see the data on class size. I’d always heard smaller was better, but maybe if you can ensure higher performing teachers the negative effect is mitigated. Kindergartens in our area increased last year from 20->25 but it seems that teachers were let go based solely on seniority.)
  • Don’t furlough. Bill says the U.S. already has one of the shortest school years and one of the shortest school days in the world, so furloughing seems to move us in the “wrong direction”.
  • For higher education, consider separating lectures from study time. The lectures can be done remotely or via video (get a lecture from the best of the best on every topic), the latter can be led by a different type of educator face to face, or in groups.
  • Bill Gates also highly recommended a couple of books: Where Your School Dollar Goes (which I can’t seem to find online) and Stretching the School Dollar, which he says is full of excellent and (often politically-unpopular but successful) case studies.

So, what do you think? Anything here new and interesting? Anything you disagree with? How are you approaching / did you approach sending your child to school?

Posted in schools | 5 Comments

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