The Eyes (Might) Have It

Is your kid driving you crazy? Have his eyes checked, says the New York Times' Motherlode blog.

In an extremely long article, which I'm guessing will be in this week's Sunday magazine, Judith Warner writes about the services of a "behavioral optometrist" and the site VisionandLearning.org, which offers vision therapy for eye problems that supposedly cause a range of symptoms that are often diagnosed as ADHD or dyslexia, among other things.

Not surprisingly, plenty of people are skeptical that some eye exercises will cure your kid's anxiety and learning disabilities, including a pediatric ophthamologist quoted in the article: "It has no validity."

The comments on the article — some from people who have tried the therapy — are mixed, and the treatment can run into the thousands.

I had therapy for my lazy eye back in sixth grade, and still suffer with strabismus, but I don't think my eye problems had any major effect on my development. But with Jackson's occasional struggles sitting still and listening to the teacher right away, I'd probably give it a shot — a consultation, at least.
Read more...

Also in the news...

• PRODUCT ALERT: But where are their Lucky Strikes and tumblers filled with JD? Mattel and AMC release Mad Men Barbie collection.


• There's plenty to feel guilty about if you're a mom. I have a laundry list. The CNN gods, however, have given us dispensation on these 31 items.


• I just got an e-mail from my school district outlining the school budget for next year. Some line items were certainly questionable -- but at least there was no entry for 27 Remington shotguns, like the one that recently appeared on a U.S. Department of Education P.O.


• CELEBRITY ALERT: A welcome distraction from that whole sex-tape thing: Rebecca Gayheart, Eric Dane welcome baby girl.


• First you're pregnant and you're fat. Then you have the baby and you're still -- fat. Gulp.

Also in the news...

• CELEBRITY ALERT: I'm always mixing her up with Heidi Klum, but good for her: Claudia Schiffer shows off baby bump.


• Remember the first time you put your precious infant in one of those body-hugging hip papooses and wondered, "Gee, how the heck does he breathe in there?" and then merrily went about your business of putting away the dishes and folding the laundry because, hey, manufacturers only put well-tested, safe products out on the market, so who are you to worry about things above your pay grade like infant suffocation? Baby slings recalled.


• First they're fat, then they're thin: Breastfeeding means your kid likely won't need Jenny Craig down the road. At least, the mice didn't.


• And speaking of breast milk: NYC restaurant owner offers cheese made of wife's lactation by-products.


• Currently, my daughter's favorite song on my iPod is "Show Me" by the Cover Girls; my son prefers Weezer's "Troublemaker": These pop artists, though, have actually collaborated on songs appearing on children's albums.

Who Lives in an Over-Licensed Mechandising Environment Under the Sea?

Sponge! Bob! Square! Pants! That's who.

To the surprise of no one, 82 percent of the "food" (note the quotes) directed at kids with a movie/tv/toy tie-in are considered unhealthy by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

As BNET notes: "Marketing to kids is lucrative — why would anyone give that up if they didn’t have to? As any mom knows, all you need to do is slap Tony the Tiger or Hannah Montana on a package of chips and kids want it. It’s a fight to get out the grocery store alive."

I'd like to punch Tony the Tiger in the face. Those "WE ARE TIGER" commercials have Jackson thinking that the key to sports success is downing a bowl of sugar-coated corn flakes. It would help if he had his cereal with milk, but the idea is as radical to him as adding peanut butter to his spaghetti.

There was a time when I was going to avoid all crap foods for the kids, but that, like many other good intentions, has gone out the window.

I can't count how many boxes of fruit snacks, which lack any fruit whatsoever, Jackson's begged us to buy. When I was I kid, the only fruit snacks available were the mostly real deal, the sticky grainy circle of strained grapes or apricots or raspberries that you had to peel off a sheet of cellophane and took quite a lot of effort to chew.

Today's pseudo-fruits are these rubbery, oddly colored turds vaguely shaped like Spider-Man, or Batman, or SpongeBob. They taste like shit, and thankfully, Jackson agrees. Yet he continues to insist on trying every different box, in the hopes that he'll find a variety he'll like.

The kids are also big fans of Gogurt, which is a kind of sugary yogurt that you suck out of a tube. The SpongeBob version is quite popular in my house, particularly the Bikini Bottom Berry flavor.

Bikini Bottom Berry. I'm a fan of SpongeBob SquarePants, and I've seen probably every episode multiple times, but I cannot recall any reference to Bikini Bottom Berries, either the planting or the harvesting or a special episode where SpongeBob and Patrick run out of pectin while trying to jar Bikini Bottom Berries for the winter. Yet Bikini Bottom Berry is my kids' favorite flavor. They ask for it, even if I had the misfortune of buying the generic, no-tie-in box of Gogurt and the same blue Gogurt is called just "Berry" or whatever the hell they call it.

"Is it Bikini Bottom Berry?" the kids will ask. I can't wait for the pediatrician or a teacher to ask the kids what their favorite fruit is, and they say, "Bikini Bottom Berry."

Maybe I'll try to serve them some Bikini Bottom Brussels Sprouts this week. Read more...

Also in the news...

• RECESSION SPECIAL: Been eyeing that kids' Snuggie in the Made on TV kiosk at the mall, but don't feel like forking out the $14.95? Make your own.


• Pepsi coursing through their veins, their brains built out of Twizzlers: Kids get 27 percent of their calories from junk food.


• The war between SAHMs and working moms just got a little more complicated: Kids with moms with work part-time are happiest.


• Keep them away from matches, liquor bottles and -- detergent capsules? Now we've got to lock up our medicine cabinets and our laundry rooms.


• We know, we know: Your own parents screwed you up so bad, and now you're a withered, neurotic, grownup mess. If only you had had a really cool TV or pop-culture parent....

Also in the news...

• CELEBRITY ALERT: A dream come true: Christina Milian and The-Dream welcome baby girl.


• Fatty fetuses: Your baby might be destined to be a chubster before he even breaks out of your stretch-mark-addled gut.


• Yep, it is those damn video games: Children who get into gaming are more aggressive, less caring.


• CELEBRITY ALERT: The world's first eight-headed snowman: Jon frolics with Gosselin kids in winter wonderland while Kate breaks a leg (in the good-luck kind of way) on her new basement dance floor for her DWTS debut.


• Think you're going to drink that beer ball and get away with it, missy? Colleges to alert parents of first-offense lushes.

NameVoyager Analysis: Michelle and Jessica

You likely know a Michelle. Maybe you are a Michelle. Michelle came out of nowhere, peaked in the 1970s (which is why you probably knew several of them if you were born during that decade), and then it dropped off. Could its popularity have come from Paul McCartney crooning about his belle? Possibly. If so, Beatles fans have become scarce, as the name has dropped to the ranking of 103 in 2008.

There are several celebrities named Michelle, but it's definitely not a name that celebs name their own kids. And I don't think either of my kids knows a Michelle, except for one in Sasha's daycare class — and that's her teacher.

If you grew up with a few Michelles in your class, you likely also knew a couple of Jessicas.


Jessica follows the same trajectory, albeit a decade ahead of Michelle. Jessica did what Michelle could not, however, hitting #1 in both the 1980s and 1990s, before dropping to #18 in 2003.

Both Michelle and Jessica serve as middle names that form an unhyphenated compound name, as in the case of the two well-known Sarahs, Sarah Jessica Parker (who, I've read, insists on being called "Sarah Jessica" and not just "Sarah," thank you very much) and Sarah Michelle Gellar. I wonder "Michelle Jessica" or "Jessica Michelle" ever took off.

I can't say I'm surprised that Jessica was more popular. That double-s ssounds
sso ssexy. (Though I'm sure parents-to-be aren't considering the sexiness factor when they name their kids.) After all, Roger Rabbit's wife was Jessica Rabbit, not Michelle Rabbit.
Read more...

Sins of the Grandfather

Alas, poor Issur Danielovitch — or as you're probably better known, Kirk Douglas. You're 93, you've living your remaining moments with the effects of a debilitating stroke, and Burt Lancaster's been dead since 1996.

Now, in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, as your son, Michael, describes the incarceration of your grandson, Cameron, you have to wonder whether you're partially to blame.

Sure, your own old man was a bastard, but you didn't exactly strive to be Dad of the Year yourself, which possibly took a toll on your own kids. Your son Eric died of a drug overdose in 2004, after years trying to make it as an actor himself.

Michael's had plenty of success, but still he felt, early in his career, that he had a lot to live up to, and had his own troubles with drugs and alcohol. Now, of course, Michael's doing fine, with a couple of young kids from his latest glamorous Oscar-winning wife who's around half his age.

Having those two young kids probably helped him forget about his adult child, Cameron, who never seemed to get it together. Sure, Michael tried to help him in the Hollywood way, just as you did for both your sons. Three generations got together in It Runs in the Family, a movie no one saw, which didn't really matter to you or Michael other than as another bullet on an IMDB or Wikipedia list of credits. But for Cameron, who ironically (or portentously) found himself cast as an aimless stoner, it was supposed to be his big break, or at least some kind of break.

(The movie also starred, as one of Cameron's brothers, one of Macauley Culkin's brothers, and one must wonder what those two talked about between takes.)

So the movie came and went, and a few years later Cameron starred in one of the crappy direct-to-DVD National Lampoon movies. Not too many years after that, he was sentenced to jail. By the time of his earliest release, if you're still around, you'll be 103.

Michael's disappointed, of course, but in Vanity Fair he sounds like he's enjoying his do-over family with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Sure, he feels bad about being an absent father during his son's formative years, but now he's got these two new kids to raise, and that hot wife to bang, and those two new movies to promote.

But you've probably got time to think, Kirk. What are you thinking now? Read more...