meta-dad

Is your child more prone to ear infections?

Ear infections are pretty common in children, but what causes them? I had lot of ear infections as a kid, bad ones. Now, it pains me (of course) to see my kids experience the same pain and discomfort. I have found there are a variety of factors that can lead to ear infections for toddlers and children, some preventable.

The American Academy of Family Physicians lists these common risk factors for ear infections in children:

• Being around cigarette smoking.
• Having had ear infections before, frequent colds, or having a family history of ear infections.
• Going to a day-care center.
• Being born premature or at low birth weight.
• Going to bed with a More »

Free Father’s Day Coloring Pages

Father’s Day is coming up and here is a list of fresh links for decent free Father’s Day coloring pages. Use the back of some old documents and recycle a bit. This will give them an opportunity to create something nice for day without spending More »

Kids In The Kitchen

Although our kids are still quite young, my wife and I feel it is important they are involved with cooking and mealtime at some level. It promotes a healthy sense of responsibility, safety in the kitchen, offers some special bonding time between you and the kids and lots of opportunities to learn different concepts along the way. Think about it; there’s lots of potential for More »

The cough & cold conundrum – Should they stay home?

Every parent, has struggled with this problem at some time, do I send my marginally sick kid to daycare or school or should I keep them home? The boogery truth about this is most of us parents have probably dropped off our dosed kid to school wondering if they were going to be able to make it through the day or would we get a call from the school nurse saying that we need to pick up our feverish kid.

Most adults are likely to have a common cold two to four times a year. Children, especially preschoolers, may have a common cold as many as More »

The complete Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Shopper

Every kid has their favorite show, right now my boys get excited about all things having to do with Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Last week it was Diego, next week- who knows! With birthdays coming up, I wanted to flush it out and see what things are available. Aside from birthdays, there is the seemingly endless need for More »

Educational summer activities

This is the 20th year teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District for Henry Anker. Over the years he has developed a number of flash-based tests for kids, grades one through six based on the State’s Standard Test. He’s currently serving as an ITAF More »