Imaginary Friends: Fun For Toddlers Without All The Work

Playdates and playgroups are great fun for toddlers, but all the messes and spills can leave Mommy with a mondo migrane. That's why I always encouraged my children to have one or two good imaginary friends.

Imaginary friends don't crush Play-Doh into the rugs, turn over toy baskets just for fun, or leave sticky fingerprints all over the upholstery. They're rarely boring, and, from my experience, usually like to share.

What's more, psychologists say these invisible playmates actually benefit toddlers by helping them deal with fears and anger, and by enabling them to test out new ways of doing things.

Of course, imaginary friends are no substitute for real minature companions, but they sure are great when Mom needs a break!

The Very Real Dangers Of Co-Sleeping

Your poor baby or toddler can’t sleep. Maybe he has a cold or one of those nightmares you’ve helped to create, so you let him crawl into your bed for a sound night’s rest. As you look over at his angelic sleeping face, that little shiver of parental joy envelops you and you tumble into sweet dreams.

As he’s still a bit sick or scared the following night, you let him do it again. Then again, and again, and again…

Fast forward six, seven, maybe even eight years. Your now noticeably enlarged child still expects a welcome invitation to your bed. You’re stiff and fatigued from lack of sleep, your marriage is in shambles, and that uber-pricey “grown-up” bed you bought is gathering dust in your son’s room.

If I can offer one piece of advice about co-sleeping, it is this: do not do it, ever! It is habit forming for both child and parent and habits, as we all know, are very difficult to break.

Baby Really Doesn’t Need Mozart, Believe Me

If you ask me, the money-grubbing producers of these ridiculous, “intelligence-enhancing” CDs need Mozart far more than your baby does. Like every good suburban lemming, I cheerfully played Baby Needs Mozart and even Baby Needs More Mozart for my son and daughter, and I can assure you that it did nothing to improve their performance on spatial reasoning tasks or anything else for that matter. What baby really needs to become smarter is simple: fewer gizmos, gadgets, and TV and more time reading, playing, and cuddling with Mom and Dad.

Falling Leaves, Pumpkins, and LICE

It's that time of year! Here's a very informative -- and humorous You Tube video about head lice from headlicetodeadlice.com. Enjoy!

Lice Are Real - Very, Very Real

I remember the tour of my daughter's classroom during kindergarten open house. The cute little adjoining cubbies where the children could hang their jackets and hats; the pile of carpet squares they would use to take a post-lunch nap; the lost and found box in the corner...

Fast forward two months later. Imagine my horror when my very own flesh and blood was sent home by the school nurse with -- gasp!! LICE. And, believe me, those lice reproduce quickly. Her head was swarming not only with mother and father lice, but also with colonies of babies (also called nits). It seems those cute little adjoining cubbies gave the lice a perfect opportunity to jump from coat to coat. And the shared carpet squares -- well, you can only imagine.

When your child has lice, you find yourself in a sort of "dead zone" in terms of parenting advice. Even the chattiest moms turn a deaf ear to this problem. So you find yourself speaking only to the heads of other lice-ridden households.

What's a parent to do, then, when this tragic affliction strikes? Well, don't even bother trying to see a doctor. Each and every pediatrician in town will SWEAR that they do not need to see your child in person...

I can tell you from experience that the only way to get rid of these critters is to absolutely smother them with Vasoline or mayonaise. Apply the stuff, put one of those old-fashioned shower caps on over the head, wait three hours, and BINGO -- they're dead!

Children Will Often Take Extraordinary Measures To Get Attention

When it comes to using extreme attention getting maneuvers, my son definitely takes the cake. One day, when he was about four, I explained that I would be leaving him in the kitchen for a short time to have a private conversation with his sister upstairs. No more than two or three minutes later, my rather handy voice-activated caller id device announced that the local police department was on the line. I picked up the phone, only to learn that the officer was responding to a 911 call from my very home. I assured him that no one had called the police – I, in fact, hadn’t used the phone all day.

Moments later, as the squad cars pulled in the driveway, I remembered teaching my son about calling 911. I raced downstairs to find him contentedly playing with his blocks, the phone nestled between the legs of his oversized Elmo doll. “Did you call 911?,” I demanded? “It was a 'mergency,” he said. “I missed you.” Needless to say, the officers weren’t too pleased by this, but they at least were kind enough not to book him.

Potty Training And Bedwetting: Why Worry About It?

Why worry about potty-training and bed wetting when Huggies and other diaper companies make these incredible contraptions known as pull-up pants? Conveniently, one Huggies brand of pull-ups, called GoodNites, can accommodate a child of 125 pounds!!!. And, of course, should your child outgrow even these before mastering perfect self-control, you can always move to a quality adult diaper brand like Depends.

Why I Hired A Lactation Consultant

Though both my children were born just shy of 8 pounds, my son practically doubled his birthweight before his first well visit with the pediatrician. He managed this through an amazing type of breastfeeding I like to call breast guzzling.

A morning shower? Forget about it. A stroll in the park? Impossible. This boy was latched on virtually from dawn to dusk. Very occasionally he would come off my breast to gurgle or burp, only to return like a praying mantis capturing a fly.

To earn the brief respite I so desperately needed, I guiltily purchased my first container of Similac. With an 8-oz bottle of it to supplement my own milk, I thought I might actually be able to wash my hair. Of course, the bottle did sate him for a while, but my own breasts became completely engorged, forcing me to make use of that Medalla Breast Pump my mother-in-law had given me as a baby shower gift. Ouch! That’s when the lactation consultant entered the picture…

Why Children Have Nightmares

Many parents believe that nightmares are just another way for children to get attention. But the sad reality is that many children actually do believe there could be a monster under their bed. Who really is to blame for all of this? Well, parents are, of course. When we expect our children to believe that an overweight bearded stranger will crawl down the chimney on Christmas Eve and a ravishing flying fairy will know where to find a bloody tooth, we’re actually just setting the stage for noctural disaster.

More Than You Need To Know About Retained Placenta

Why the pregnancy books just gloss over this one remains a mystery to me. This lovely syndrome occurs when a mother for some reason or another fails to expel the organ that joined her and baby in pregnancy during delivery. Believe me, there’s nothing like going through labor and childbirth only to find out that you need to remove retained placenta through a type of surgical abortion known as a D&C.

The Overpowering Fear Of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Call me a worrywart, but I, like many others, developed an unexpected and absolutely overwhelming fear of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) immediately following the birth of my daughter. There was no way I was going to lose my precious bundle of joy so tragically. So, I forced my poor little girl to sleep without a blanket for the entire first year of her life (being cold was preferable to strangulation, in my view). And she also spent that year wedged between a foam contraption designed to ensure that there was no way in hell she could sleep on her stomach, let alone even move. I’m happy to report that she did manage to escape this tragic syndrome, though she now tosses and turns with a vengeance, I suppose to somehow make up for lost time.

The Joys Of Childbirth: Episiotomy

There are just some things the pregnancy books leave out... Take, for example, the E-Word. That’s E for EPISIOTOMY, and it basically entails slicing an entire part of your most private flesh with a surgical knife so that your baby’s head can pass through. What happens next -- how your body is sewn back together --depends entirely on the expertise of your obstetrician.

Had I known about this little proceduce before my daughter was born, I can assure you that I would have opted for a C-section. All I do know is that Es can get horribly infected, resulting in a wrenching pain that is bearable only because your newborn bundle of job has the power to distract you day and night.