A license isn’t necessarily a guarantee of quality. It merely shows that the facility has met the minimum health, safety, and teacher training standards set by the state. In some states, having a license means only that a preschool has registered as a business; in others, it means a preschool has passed a stringent test. In any case, ask to see the preschool’s license when you visit to make sure it’s at least up to date, and check here to see what it takes to get one in your state – http://nrc.uchsc.edu/states.html. You can also check a preschool’s license by calling your state or county social services department (look in the phone book).

What does it mean if a preschool is “accredited”?
Accreditation may be a more telling sign that you’ve found a good preschool. Look for one that has passed the tough accreditation process formulated by the National Association for the Education of young Children (NAEYC), a benchmark of quality. So far, NAEYC has accredited only a fraction (approximately 6,000) of this country’s more than 96,000 licensed preschools and daycare centers. About 12,000 more have ordered materials from NAEYC that outline what a center must have to be accredited. Keep in mind that the accreditation process can take up to 18 months and cost more than $400, which is one reason why so few centers have yet to seek that stamp of approval. What’s more, preschools must update their accreditation every three years, and this can be time consuming for a small school with limited personnel.

To search NAEYC’s database and find out whether your preschool has made the cut – http://www.naeyc.org/accreditation/center_search.asp

[via Parent Center]

Most preschools operate on an installment plan, and the more quickly you pay the tuition in full — in two installments, say, rather than monthly — the cheaper it will be for you. Many schools charge interest if the tuition payments are spread out over a period of months.

Parent-run cooperative preschools generally cost less but require more of your time. Fran Brook, a mother of three in Novato, Calif., chose a co-op when she sent her third child to Novato Parents’ Nursery School. “I spent one day there every other week leading the kids in activities the director had planned,” she says. “We also had one evening meeting a month and one or two work Saturdays a year.”

Brook still had to pay something, but she estimates it was half what a regular school would have cost. What’s more, it was a great way to become part of the community. “I was new in town,” she says. “Through my son’s preschool I got to meet other parents with similar interests.”

[via Parent Center]

Watch your children for signs of fear and anxiety they may not be able to put into words. Have your children become extra clingy, needing more hugs and kisses than usual? Have your children started wetting the bed or sucking their thumb after you thought they had outgrown that behavior? They may be feeling the pressure of what is going on in the world around them. Use play to help your children express their fears and encourage them to use art or pretend games to express what they may not be able to put into words.

Use your family like a security blanket for your children: wrap them up in family closeness and make sure your children have lots of family time. During times of stress and change, spend more time with your children playing games, reading to them, or just holding them close.

Young children especially crave routine and rituals. If bedtime is the time you read stories to your children, make sure you keep that time for stories. Your child may be less able to handle change when he or she is going through a particularly rough time.

[via APA]

The latest research shows mixed results. According to an ongoing study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Md., which has tracked more than 1,300 children in 10 cities since 1991, preschoolers who attend day care for a year or more have an increased chance of discipline problems through the sixth grade, regardless of sex, family income or the quality of the day care center. On average, the more time that a child spends in day care (especially as an infant or toddler), the more problems arise.

But the study, published in the March-April issue of Child Development, also found that high-quality day care attendance is linked to children’s higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.

The takeaway message is that both the quantity and quality of child care do matter,” says Sharon Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education in Washington, D.C. As a result, Ramey recommends that working parents should try to arrange their schedules creatively so that a child doesn’t have to be in nonparental care for excessively long periods of time — say, more than 30 to 40 hours a week.

In addition, Ramey says that research is just starting to show that not only is it important to find high-quality child care, but it’s also important to find the type of care that works best for your son or daughter and that takes his or her personality and individual needs into account.

In other words, a place that works for one youngster may or may not be the right place for another youngster. Thus, working parents need to be on the lookout for any signs of stress or distress in a child who attends day care — such as unusual crying or hitting incidents — and deal with them proactively.

Still, despite the somewhat troubling research findings regarding day care and discipline problems, Ramey notes that this new study “also affirms, again, that home environment has the largest and most lasting effect on a child.” This includes the overall quality of parenting — which is a stronger and much more significant predictor of developmental outcomes than any early child care experience.  

[via Revolution Health Group]

The makers of Thomas and Friends wooden railway toys is recalling about one and a-half million of them.

RC2 Corporation, which imports and distributes the toy, issued the recall because paint on the toys contains lead and could be toxic if ingested by young children. There have been no injuries reported.

The recall covers wooden vehicles, buildings and other parts sole from January 2005 through this month.

Details: by phone at 866-725-4407;

Details: by Web at http://recalls.rc2.com and http://www.cpsc.gov.

[via KTLA]

The campaign worked: Almost 69 percent of men and 46 percent of women surveyed reported that they would be comfortable with having their child breastfed in public after the campaign, up from 54 and 35 percent, respectively, before the campaign.

“I was amazed by the findings. The evaluation shows that this kind of community intervention can create a social environment that is more supportive for breastfeeding,” says Christine Olson, Cornell professor of nutritional sciences.

The intervention was led by the Healthy Start Partnership of Herkimer County, a coalition of seven health and nutrition professionals, including Linda Robbins, nutrition educator from Cornell Cooperative Extension. The breastfeeding project is their first initiative, and it seeks to improve the cultural acceptance of breastfeeding as not only helping women shed pounds after childbirth, says Olson, but also helping reduce the risk of obesity in infants’ later life. Although researchers do not completely understood why breastfed infants have a lower risk of obesity in later life, Olson notes that it is harder to overfeed a breastfed infant than bottle-fed one and that breastfed infants gain weight more slowly, which has been linked to lower obesity risk.

- You want to take out a contract on the kid who broke your child’s favorite toy and made him/her cry.

- You have time to shave only one leg at a time.

- You hide in the bathroom to be alone.

- Your child throws up and you catch it.

- Someone else’s kid throws up at a party and you keep eating.

- You consider finger paint to be a controlled substance.

- You mastered the art of placing food on a plate without anything touching.

- Your child insists that you read “Once upon a Potty” out loud in the lobby of the doctor’s office and you do it.

- You hire a baby sitter because you haven’t been out with your husband in ages, then you spend half the night talking about and checking on the kids.

- You hope ketchup is a vegetable because it’s the only one your child eats.

- You find yourself cutting your husband’s sandwiches into unusual shapes.

- You fast-forward through the scene when the hunter shoots Bambi’s mother.

- You obsess when your child clings to you upon parting during his first month at school, then you obsess when he skips in without looking back.

- You can’t bear to give away baby clothes–it’s so final.

- You hear your mother’s voice coming out of your mouth when you say, “Not in your good clothes.”

- You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.

- You read that the average-five-year old asks 437 questions a day and feel proud that your kid is “above average.”

Defense: What you’d better have around de yard if you’re going to let the children play outside.

Drooling: How teething babies wash their chins.

Dumbwaiter: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.

Family planning: The art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the edge of financial disaster

Feedback: The inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate the strained carrots.

Full name: What you call your child when you’re mad at him.

Grandparents: The people who think your children are wonderful even though they’re sure you’re not raising them right.

Hearsay: What toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.

Impregnable: A woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.

Independent: How we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.

Look out: What it’s too late for your child to do by the time you scream it.

Prenatal: When your life was still somewhat your own.

Preprared childbirth: A contradiction in terms.

Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.

Show off: A child who is more talented than yours.

Sterilize: What you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it.

Storeroom: The distance required between the supermarket aisles so that children in shopping carts can’t quite reach anything.

Temper tantrums: What you should keep to a minimum so as to not upset the children.

Top bunk: Where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.

Two-minute warning: When the baby’s face turns red and she begins to make those familiar grunting noises.

Verbal: Able to whine in words

Whodunit: None of the kids that live in your house.

Lawmakers urged to spend more to make babies healthier
Florida Times-Union – TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Last year in Madison County, in rural north central Florida, 36 black infants died for every 1,000 babies born, giving the county a startling infant mortality rate. “We calculated that put us right between the Dominican Republic

LA hospital faulted for neonatal ICU bacteria outbreak
CNN – White Memorial Medical Center closed the unit Dec. 4 after an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa sickened five infants. Two of the babies died, and their deaths were believed to have been caused by the pathogen. In a report issued Tuesday, inspectors

Viewpoint: Infant care another direct rule casualty
Belfast Telegraph – Not for the first time, Government assurances about the National Health Service have turned out not to be worth the paper upon which they were written. The latest case in point is a surgery unit for infants at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast

Teen Pregnancy Rates Hit All-Time Low
Washington Post – Non-Hispanic black newborns were more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic white and Hispanic infants to die within a year of birth. Other findings in the report: The twin birth rate rose by 2 percent in 2004, to 32.2 twins per 1,000 total births, a

Ulster infant surgery unit is facing closure
Belfast Telegraph – Northern Ireland’s only surgery unit for infants is facing permanent closure – despite Government reassurances three months ago that it would reopen in March – the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today. Although the Royal Hospital Trust confirmed there

Children step up road safety skills
NorthantsNews.com – YOUNGSTERS who fear crossing the busy road outside their school have taken part in a special safety course. Pupils from Ruskin Infants School have been rewarded with certificates after completing a one-month road safety awareness course. They say the

Nassau legislature to propose law on unregistered alarms
Newsday – is also expected to approve more than a dozen grants, including a federal grant of $6,310,400 to provide health and social services for people on Long Island with HIV and AIDS; a $925,570 state health grant for services to eligible Nassau infants and

Former Conjoined Twins Continue Recovery
Washington Post – ROCHESTER, Minn. — Two formerly conjoined twin infants have been upgraded to fair condition, nearly a month after they were surgically separated at the Mayo Clinic. The clinic said 6-month-old Abbygail and Madysen Fitterer, who were born conjoined

Study: Medium caffeine intake doesn’t affect pregnancy
CNN – The number of infants who were small for their gestational age were nearly the same in both groups. Bech said women who drink a lot of coffee usually smoke and drink more alcohol than other females, which could influence birth weight. But because the