Every parent wants their child to be happy.

Happy kids mean happy parents, but how do we foster happiness?

Growing Happy Kids: How to Foster Inner Confidence, Success, and Happiness by Maureen Healy promises to integrate “Eastern wisdom with Western psychology to keep children strong from the inside.”

Does strength equate happiness? According to Healy, self-doubt and sadness go hand in hand throughout the world.

We all want children to be happy and grow into productive, fulfilled adults, and according to parenting expert Maureen Healy, the secret to that success is in providing a foundation of inner confidence. With twenty years of experience as a spiritual teacher and child development expert, Healy knows that confidence is never “out there” but is something to be cultivated from inside.Healy literally traveled the world in search of the best practices in raising inwardly strong children and the connection between inner confidence and lasting happiness. In Growing Happy Kids, she draws on her Buddhist training, her background in child psychology, and the latest scientific research. The result is her insightful model for creating inner confidence and cultivating a sense of emotional strength that lays the foundation for children’s happiest lives.Anyone who touches the life of a child–parents, teachers, school administrators, grandparents, clinicians–will gain wise ideas and practical suggestions for nurturing a child’s sense of confidence and ultimately, happiness.

Examining the “confidence-happiness connection”, Healy uses examples of real parents and real children facing common problems, such as bullying.

A third way to lasting happiness is learning how to respond to life calmly.  Instead of being quickly swayed by negative emotions like anger, your child can connect with his or her calm center and make smart choices when life requires it-like when a beloved pet dies or a sibling breaks a favorite toy.

Calmness in the face of adversity…it is something my yoga teacher says when holding difficult asanas.

I love Healy’s chart of “Confidence Habits”, such as eating right and creating an uplifting community.  The affirmations at the end of the book are lovely.

If you read this book, will you be guaranteed a happy child?  Obviously not, but it does give parents some food for thought and ideas about how to positively support their child’s social and emotional development.

disclosure: The products described above were sent to us as free samples. Prior assurances as to the nature of the reviews, whether positive or negative, were not given. No financial payments were accepted in exchange for the reviews. The reviews reflect our honest, authentic opinions.

Where East Meets West: Growing Happy Kids is a post from: Eco Child's Play

English: Joseph Woodley, grandparents, Pierce and Mattie Gilliam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I first became concerned about the environment as a preteen, my efforts were largely conservation based wanting to preserve and protect wildlife and wilderness.  As I grew older, these concerns switched  more to what our toxic world was doing to human health.  As an educator and a parent, seeing these effects on our children furthered my efforts of activism towards a cleaner, healthier world for all creatures great and small.

As a parent of a child with special needs, epigenetics hits home as the most likely cause.  It used to be children with special needs were an anomaly, but as rates, such as autism rise, these anomalies are more the norm.  As a culture we seek answers, but to truly find them, according to new research, we may need to go back generations to find the culprit.

According to new research, behavior problems, such as anxiety, can actually be linked to a specific fungicide our grandparents were exposed to.  

Science Daily reports:

The researchers — David Crews at Texas , Michael Skinner at Washington State and colleagues — exposed gestating female rats to vinclozolin, a popular fruit and vegetable fungicide known to disrupt hormones and have effects across generations of animals. The researchers then put the rats’ third generation of offspring through a variety of behavioral tests and found they were more anxious, more sensitive to stress, and had greater activity in stress-related regions of the brain than descendants of unexposed rats.

“We are now in the third human generation since the start of the chemical revolution, since humans have been exposed to these kinds of toxins,” says Crews. “This is the animal model of that.”

“The ancestral exposure of your great grandmother alters your brain development to then respond to stress differently,” says Skinner. “We did not know a stress response could be programmed by your ancestors’ environmental exposures.”

I’ve always thought that my grandparents lived healthier lives than the current generation. Their diet was full of whole foods, and many lived on farms.  Even with a more natural diet, the birth of the chemical revolution not only exposed the air and water they drank, but advertising sold them on all sorts of toxic home products to clean their ovens and get rid of soap scum.  It was viewed as progress.  Three generations later, our genes are paying the price.

What about our grandchildren?  What sort of effect will the thousands of chemicals pervasive in our environment and in our products do to their health, both neurologically and physiologically?

Rodale explains how epigentics will change how we view medical problems:

Here and now, pregnant women may want to pay special attention to avoiding environmental exposure to chemicals with these kinds of adverse effects. Eating organic and avoiding plastic are good places to start. Skinner also suggests knowing what’s in your water and filtering accordingly.

But down the line, Skinner says studying epigenetics could change the field of medicine as we know it. “Today, what we do is reactionary medicine. We don’t do anything until the disease happens,” he says, adding that in the future, we may be able to test a person earlier in life to figure out what his or her ancestors were exposed to. “Then, we might be able to figure out if you have a 95 percent chance of developing a mammary tumor, and we could develop a therapeutic treatment to use years before the disease occurs, as a way of preventative medicine.”

It is frustrating, but we can’t do anything about the past.  What we can do is clean up our world immediately to protect future generations!

We have poisoned so many place on Earth, that many of them are uninhabitable like Treece, Kansas. Other places shouldn’t be habited, like Camp LeJeune.  We need to stop this crazy toxic chemical use before it is too late.

Is Grandpa’s Chemical Exposure Making You Anxious? is a post from: Eco Child's Play

by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff
Executive Director & CEO
www.healthychild.org

After the CDC lowered the threshold at which a child is at risk for lead poisoning by half last week, the number of children under six who are now considered at risk jumped from 77,000 to 442,000, according to the Huffington Post. The article quoted Dr. Phil Landrigan, Healthy Child Honorary Board member and chairman of the department of preventative medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City: “There is no safe level. Lead is toxic to the developing brain at low levels. Prenatal exposure causes brain damage. Exposure to an infant or toddler causes brain damage.” Safety steps to take include “removing old leaded windows, repairing paint that is chipping or peeling, using a HEPA vacuum and keeping kids’ hands washed.”

Flame Retardants Tip the Balance

The Chicago Tribune broke the story and now Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times is picking up the thread. Could news about flame retardants be the tipping point we need to push chemical management reform? From the Trib opinion pages: “We’re talking about the safety of people in their own homes. Products that were sold as protecting them instead can harm them. Anger? That’s too mild. This is outrageous.”

Fewer Chemicals in Breast Milk

A new article published by the Best for Babes organization summarizes new facts about breastfeeding, including the good news that levels of some toxic chemicals in breast milk, including PCBs and DDT, are in fact going down.

More Kids at Risk for Lead Poisoning is a post from: Eco Child's Play

Kids need and deserve paint!!! The only problem is, even when they are older, children are not very neat artists. Recently, I was surprised at how much paint my daughter had all over her hands, and she is ten-years-old!

Since our skin absorbs toxins, it is very important children use quality, natural art supplies, as you know they will be wearing them!

Even though paints designed for children come with “non-toxic” assurances, that certainly does not mean they are natural. Likewise, “all natural” does not mean non-toxic.

Originally paint was made from pure pigment found on Earth. In fact, there are still windmills in Holland used for grinding paint pigments. This traditional process is behind Earth Paint.

We were sent a petite version of Earth Paints for Children:

Earth Paints for Children – Petite is an organic, eco-friendly paint kit made from primarily natural earth pigments (pure clay). The naturally colored clay was collected from the ground, dried, crushed and sifted into pure pigment. Mix water with these six powdered colors to create a creamy paint similar to tempera or add more water to create watercolor like effects. It is different from other children’s paint in that it is a high quality, rich, vibrant paint that is free of fillers and preservatives. It is perfect for adults as well to create quality works of art on paper, stones, fabric, wood and more.

My kids really like mixing their own colors from the powders, and I think it really helps kids understand the origins of paint to work with powdered pigments. It helps us connect to our cave dwelling artistic roots!  In fact, for older students, Earth Paints can be included in history lessons.

Natural Earth pigments were among the earliest recorded materials used by our ancestors to make paint, and their use pre-dates recorded history. Starting at least 100,000 years ago, ancient people from all over the world, including Egyptians, Native Americans, ancient Buddhists, Medieval monks, and Renaissance masters used earthen pigments to make their paints. Humans on almost every continent ground up earthen clays and minerals and mixed them with a binder such as honey, urine, blood, sap, grease, or oil. This basic technique, with numerous variations, became the prevailing method of oil painting until the Nineteenth century’s introduction of synthetic pigments and petroleum-based paints.

Such a lesson in ancient art history would be perfect for homeschool, as well as the classroom!  Earth Paints would also be a great source for lessons in geology learning about the natural sources for the pigments.

I would love to try the Earth Oil Paint Kit myself!

disclosure: The products described above were sent to us as free samples. Prior assurances as to the nature of the reviews, whether positive or negative, were not given. No financial payments were accepted in exchange for the reviews. The reviews reflect our honest, authentic opinions.

Earth Paint: Eco-Friendly, Natural Paint Kit Made in the USA is a post from: Eco Child's Play

I have long advocated that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is bad for our health and has no place in school lunches.  It is banned from our home. I personally banned it from the preschool program I taught for eight years.

Now, there is evidence it is not just the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but HFCS actually affects memory and thus learning.

Mother Jones reports:

 A team of UCLA researchers has observed that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) makes rats more forgetful, while omega-3 fatty acids—chemical compounds that research has shown can protect the brain’s synapses—seem to have the opposite effect.

The researchers, whose paper will be published this week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology, trained a group of rats to navigate a maze. Then, they randomly divided the rats into four groups, and for six weeks they fed each group a slightly different diet in addition to the usual rat chow: One group received HFCS in its water; another received omega-3 fatty acids. A third received both HFCS and omega-3s, and the fourth, a control group, received plain old rat chow.

At the end of the six weeks, the group that had been given omega-3 fatty acids but no HFCS was the speediest at remembering how to get out of the maze. The control group (no HFCS or omega-3s) was the second fastest, and the group that had received omega-3 fatty acids and HFCS came in third. The slowpokes of the lot were the group that had only received HFCS. The takeaway: HFCS seemed to impair rats’ memory, while omega-3 fatty acids seemed to help it.

I can’t help but think of Ralph S. Mouse running on top of the maze.  Apparently, he didn’t find any HFCS in the Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School cafeteria to be able to outsmart the maze.

Actually, the UCLA study has been corrected, as the researchers did not study HFCS soley, but fructose ”generally”.  Even so, the research is still important:

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

Sources of fructose in the Western diet include cane sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid sweetener. The syrup is widely added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes roughly 47 pounds of cane sugar and 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We’re less concerned about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants,” explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. “We’re more concerned about the fructose in high-fructose corn syrup, which is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative.”

High sugar consumption impaired cognitive abilities and disrupted insulin signalling by engaging molecules associated with energy metabolism and synaptic plasticity; in turn, the presence of docosahexaenoic acid, an n-3 fatty acid, restored metabolic homeostasis.

Image:  License Some rights reserved by disrupsean

High Sugar Consumption Makes Kids Dumb is a post from: Eco Child's Play

If you have kids, you most likely have some Crayola markers in your home.  If you don’t, I can almost guarantee your child’s school has them.

Unfortunately, markers do not last forever.  In fact, one reason I try to avoid them is they dry up long before I think they should. If you can’t rehydrate them, which I try, they get tossed into the garbage. That is a lot of plastic for a little coloring.

Children at Sun Valley School in San Rafael, California have created an online petition asking Crayola to recycle markers.  Unfortunately, the company did not respond enthusiastically.

Dear Crayola,

I love Crayola products and I am a Crayola fan. I join with children’s author, Mr. Land and his “Kids That Care” from Sun Valley School in asking you to establish a convenient take-back program for your plastic markers that kids can easily partake in. Specifically, we want used Crayola plastic markers to be recycled into new Crayola products that can be purchased again and again.

We are looking for your leadership to empower kids to be “green.” Will you take the lead and show the world that you care about keeping plastics out of landfills, incinerators and oceans? When plastics are sent to landfill, or burned for electricity, or washed into oceans, they pollute Earth.

Kids care deeply about protecting earth and they need your help. Crayola, will you please “make your mark” and show us how much you care about our kids and their future?

These kids have already over 61,000 signatures and caught the attention of the mainstream media.  MSNBC reports:

“The idea evolved from conversations with kids about plastic waste and they immediately identified with how many Crayola plastic markers they had thrown away,” Land Wilson, the adult volunteer who facilitates the efforts, told msnbc.com. “Forty students eagerly stepped up and wanted to do something about the problem.”

“We simply want Crayola to establish an easy take back program that kids can partake in  – i.e. prepaid return envelopes with their products or dropoff locations at retail outlets and schools,” he added…

Crayola acknowledged the good intentions but said that, for now at least, there’s no practical way to take back and recycle entire markers.

“We value and encourage children to share their ideas and appreciate the suggestion that the students of Sun Valley brought to our attention,” Crayola spokeswoman Stacy Gabrielle told msnbc.com. “At this time, we do not have the facilities or a process that will enable us to offer a take back program.”

Needless to say, Crayola’s response is lame!!!

Perhaps the company could team up with Terracycle or change their packaging so that what you buy the markers in turns into a return envelope.  Even Elmer’s Glue has teamed up with Terracycle, why not Crayola?

I honestly don’t feel Crayola took the children’s petition seriously and truly looked into alternatives. Welcome to the world of activism kids…Don’t give up!

Image:  License Some rights reserved by stevendepolo

Activist Kids That Care: San Rafael Elementary Asks Crayola to Recycle; Crayola Says NO! is a post from: Eco Child's Play

Midwives Know Birth Matters [video] is a post from: Eco Child's Play

Being a new mom (and dad) is exhausting, as is finding the right natural products to use.  Who has time to shop around when you barely get enough sleep?  petiteBox makes it easy with their monthly subscription service:

This high-end subscription service makes it easy for new families with a delightful box of the “most coveted products”, which thankfully are organic and natural!

Not sure which baby products are the best for your precious little one? petiteBox is an exclusive baby box service that sends the latest baby product samples from top brands and wellness products just for Mom straight to your door. Each month you’ll receive a new baby box full of baby necessities such as baby lotion, baby clothes, baby food, calming oils and more. The contents of the baby boxes change each month, but only the best baby products are always included. You will never get the same thing twice.

Many of my favorite brands are represented in these aesthetically pleasing boxes like Earth Friendly Baby and Weleda. It’s also great to discover new brands!

We were sent a box designed for the one-month-old baby and mom. It included MAM trends BPA-free pacifiers, Earth Friendly Baby Bubble Bath, a super soft snuggly item by Angel Dear, MD Moms cleansing towelettes, Weleda Iris Hydrating Day Cream, Weleda Almond Soothing Cleansing Lotion, and Weleda Almond Soothing Facial Cream.  Cards containing information and advice on breastfeeding, sleep, and your baby’s first month are also included.

I think petiteBox is affordable at $25 a month, and I think it would make a really nice gift for a new family!  Shipping is free, and you can cancel at anytime.

disclosure: The products described above were sent to us as free samples. Prior assurances as to the nature of the reviews, whether positive or negative, were not given. No financial payments were accepted in exchange for the reviews. The reviews reflect our honest, authentic opinions.

petiteBox: Monthly Delivery of Premier Natural Brands for Mom and Babe is a post from: Eco Child's Play

Growth of organic farmland since the year 2000 Development of organically managed land by world regions since 2000 Data: www.organic-world.net Deutsch: Entwicklung der Öko-Anbaufläche nach Weltregionen seit 2000 Daten: www.organic-world.net (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Population growth is a huge strain on the environment. Reducing family size is vital to saving the Earth, no matter how much the notion upsets some folks. Feeding the world‘s 7,013,987,392 people is a challenge and often cited as to why organic food is not as green as consumers believe.  In my opinion, this is just a myth.

Yes, we can feed the world organically!

Marc Gunther writes for GreenBiz.com:

New scientific research points to a key drawback of organic agriculture, unfortunately: It is typically less efficient and productive than conventional growing methods. That’s a problem for fans of organic because the world has a limited supply of farmland, a billion or so undernourished people, a growing population, an expanding middle class and therefore a vast appetite for affordable and nourishing food.

If, in fact, organic methods are less productive, scaling up the production of organic food at will require more land, contribute to deforestation and cost more than growing our food using conventional methods. That suggests that organic methods alone can’t feed the world in a sustainable way.

Clearly, organic farming is a more environmentally friendly “method”, as Gunther points out, reducing pollution and health risks to workers from dangerous agro-chemicals; however, when “outcomes” are examined, the smaller yields of organic farms is cited as cause for concern.

I find such concerns hogwash.  Given our current system of waste (both conventionally and organically) and consumption of meat, these lower yields of organic food production would not be a concern.  According to a 2004 study by the University of Arizona (UA), between 40 to 50 percent of food grown is wasted and never reaches consumers.  Furthermore, we waste even more food after it has left the farm.  The New York Times reports:

You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

US Meat Consumption (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And what about meat?

According to the UN, meat production is responsible for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.  The UK’s Food Climate Research Network cites lower estimates holding food production for livestock accountable for 10 to 15 percent of emissions.  Whatever the statistic, the impact of global meat production is significant, and meat consumption is up in the United States.  Biofuels Digest reports:

70 percent of US corn and soy production is devoted to feed, not food, and not fuel…According to the FAO and the USDA , US meat consumption has increased 137 pounds per person since the 1950s, with a resulting increase in grain usage of 375 pounds per person (the grain fed to cattle and poultry). Cheese consumption has increased faster than milk’s decline, and Americans consume 179 extra pounds of milk, which uses up another 63 pounds of grain.  In short, dietary change in the US has resulted in an additional 438 pounds of grains per capita, or 8 bushels of corn.

These statistics on food waste and meat consumption only reflect 313,562,376 of the world’s population, but other developed countries probably have similar statistics compared the US.

If we ate less meat and reduced the tremendous amount of food that is wasted currently, I do believe we could feed the world organically.  That is the sort of outcome I would like to hear discussed when talking about organic versus conventional farming.

Organic vs. Conventional: Can We Feed the World? is a post from: Eco Child's Play

I have never been one to use a fabric softener, but then again, I commit the laundry green sin of using my dryer because I am lazy and don’t like stiff crunchy clothes.  It’s not every load that I use the dryer for, but maybe if I used fabric softener, the air dried clothes would be more pleasant for our sensory issues.

We were sent Dropps Fabric Softener Pacs Lavender to try:

Finally, there is an in-wash softener designed to conveniently toss in at the beginning of your wash cycle, thus eliminating the extra, once-common rinse cycle step. Gentle enough for baby’s skin, Dropps’ unique mineral formula softens clothes without suffocating fibers, keeping towels absorbent, athletic wear wickable, and infant clothes flame-retardant. Dropps Fabric Softener Pacs work in all washers and all water temperatures on all fabrics and colors, leaving loved ones with comfortable, clean clothing that has with long-lasting fragrance and freshness.

Dropps Fabric Softener Pacs are also eco-friendly, from formula to packaging. The formula, created from a clay material, is naturally formed from a chemical alteration of volcanic ash that is enclosed in an energy-efficient, dissolvable pac. The packaging, biodegradable and safe in all septic tanks, is part of a revolutionary recycling solution resulting from a partnership between Dropps® and TerraCycle®, the international upcycling enthusiast.

Like any family of four, we do a lot of laundry (at least two loads a day).  One package of Dropps would only last us about a week, which is not realistic for family. Saving these Dropps for loads I know will be hung outside instead of for every load may be a compromise, but the additional expense is probably not something we can add to our laundry routine.

I am pleased a natural alternative to chemical fabric softeners is available for those that want or need it.

disclosure: The products described above were sent to us as free samples. Prior assurances as to the nature of the reviews, whether positive or negative, were not given. No financial payments were accepted in exchange for the reviews. The reviews reflect our honest, authentic opinions.

Natural Home: Use Tiny Minerals to Soften Clothes is a post from: Eco Child's Play