During pregnancy women have nine months to adjust to the idea of a baby. We put the baby’s needs before our own from the start. We take our prenatals even if we don’t usually take vitamins. We suffer through morning sickness that sometimes lasts all day. We forsake our favorite foods and drinks—sushi, Cesar salad, certain cheeses, wine, and raw chocolate chip cookie dough. We feel life moving inside of us. But for men it is more abstract. They see changes in us and our bodies but it is harder for them to connect to the baby growing inside of us until they meet. Usually men focus on the financial concerns and express their anxiety there. Most men are a little shell shocked when baby arrives. They are used to feeling competent and being in control. Nobody is in control of baby. Frequently, men don’t fully connect with their child until some time between the first “social smile” and the first word.

Do your best to include him. Teach him how to do the baby related tasks so that he feels confident. If he doesn’t do it exactly the same way you do it, let it go unless he is doing something dangerous. Help him build on his growing strengths as a father.

We have all heard that television viewing can make kids more aggressive and even violent. But physical violence is not the only type of aggression that is effected by television viewing and violent shows are not the only shows parents need to be concerned about. In a study of media exposure and preschooler age children, researchers Drs. Jamie Ostrov and Douglas Gentile found that the more educational media children viewed, the more relationally aggressive they were. Relational aggression is when a relationship is used to inflict harm such as malicious secrets, lies, gossip, intentionally shunning, ignoring or ostracizing a peer. This type of aggression was found to be especially significant among girls. It is believed that young children, even preschoolers, have a difficult time understanding plots and, as a result, miss the overall message. Instead they learn from each of the behaviors demonstrated in the show, including relationally aggressive behavior. Even so-called “prosocial shows” designed for children show a high level of relational aggression. Most shows spend the majority of the program establishing conflict between characters and only a few minutes resolving it, leaving young children more likely to remember the mean behavior as opposed to the moral message. In an analysis of children’s programming by Dr. Cynthia Scheibe it was found that 66.6 percent of “prosocial shows” contained insults which is not dramatically better than the average children’s show which was found to have insults 96 percent of the time.

There is a movement in this country towards more conscious eating; eating that requires thought about how food choices effect the environment, how animals are treated and, of course, how foods affect our bodies. It has been estimated that 7.3 millions adults follow a vegetarian diet and of those 1 million are vegan (do not eat any animals or products that come from animal sources such as milk or eggs). Experts are reporting more and more children are choosing to go vegetarian  and more parents are opting to raise their kids without meat.

 Best sellers like Skinny Bitch , Eating Animals, and Food Rules have caused people to become more conscious about their food intake on a deeper level. According to a poll done by Vegetarian Times,  

• 46 percent of people report that they chose to become vegetarians to become healthier
• 15 percent made the switch for animal welfare
• 12 percent due to the influence of family or friends
• 5 percent because of ethics
• 9 percent did so for other reasons

Gone are the days when parents had to worry about their vegetarian kids having poor nutrition. Today’s markets, specialty stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc.) and online stores are filled with nutritious vegetarian options. It just takes a little more time, research and reading to make sure your child is getting a balanced diet, but it is worth it. There are many reasons for you to considering going vegetarian.

1) Avoiding disease and increasing lifespan.

I don’t know about you, but I want to dance at my grandchild’s wedding and I hope that my children will live well into the triple digits. In fact, research shows that vegetarians and vegans have far fewer incidents of heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, gallstones, kidney disease, obesity, and colon disease. Research at Loma Linda University has found that vegetarian men live, on average, about seven years longer than their meat eating counterparts. European studies have shown that vegans may live an additional 15 years over the animal-eating population. The China Study, which is considered to be the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted, quite simply found that people who ate the most animal-based foods had the most chronic diseases and those who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and had the fewest chronic diseases.

2) Inhumane treatment of animals

When I was ten years old I saw a documentary of the slaughterhouses and never ate meat again. Once you are aware of or, even more powerfully, witness the slaughter of animals, it is difficult to eat meat ever again. It is also difficult to explain to your child why she should not pull your dog’s tail but it is okay to put animals in some of the cruelest of imaginable conditions, as are done on factory farms which account for 99 percent of all animals eaten in this country, and then slaughter them mercilessly. According to one worker at IBP, the world’s largest meat packing company, “Workers can open the legs, the stomach, the neck, cut off feet while the cow is still breathing… I would estimate that one out of ten cows is still alive when it’s bled and skinned.” Others, John Robbins author of The Food Revolution, estimate that number to be closer to 90 percent.

We work very hard to disconnect from the truth of what we eat. We call cows “beef,” and  pigs “pork while we protect our children from the truth that we don’t want to face ourselves. When a friend’s insightful three year old son asked if the chicken he was eating was like the chicken he had seen on a farm, she was at a loss for words. As hard as it is, children deserve accurate and age appropriate information. Some may argue with me that telling a child that the chicken he is eating was once just like the one he saw walking on the farm is not age appropriate, but I disagree. Young children don’t need to know the details of the slaughter but they deserve to know where their food really comes from.

3) Environmental impact

Meat production is harmful to the planet and our children need us to keep it in good condition for their future. Research has shown that animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is twenty-one times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Factory farming also creates a huge amount of toxic sludge. According to the WorldWatch Institute, animals raised for food produce nearly 89,000 pounds of excrement per second which is 130 times the waste of the entire human population of the United States. Disposing of all this animal waste is problematic for the planet. While there are very strict laws about the disposal of human waste, equivalent laws do not exist for animal waste. Because of agricultural waste emptying from rivers and tributaries in to the Gulf of Mexico there is a “Dead Zone,” where there is no oxygen in the water and it cannot sustain any life. In 2008, this “Dead Zone” was reportedly 8,000 square miles.

Factory farming also uses incredible amounts of water, which is one of the earth’s most important resources. According to the Water Education Foundation it takes 2,464 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. By comparison, it only takes 23 gallons to produce one pound of lettuce. Based on these numbers Robbins estimates you can save more water by not eating one pound of beef than if you skipped your daily shower for six months.

4) Avoiding toxins.

A recent study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives revealed that people who frequently eat poultry and beef have higher levels of PBDE’s (Polybrominated diphenylethers), a common flame retardant, in their blood. How did flame retardants get in your food? These chemicals are everywhere: in children’s pajamas, mattresses, computers, TVs, furniture, upholstery, rugs, draperies, home electronics, and car interiors. They leak into the environment through the air, are carried by dust and water and enter the food chain. These hormone disrupters have been linked to impaired memory, abnormalities of coordination, hyperactivity, and infertility. The study found that vegetarians had PBDE concentrations that were 25 percent lower than omnivores.

Because fish are known to be a great source of brain-boosting omega-3 acids, parents tend to be especially pleased when their children are willing to eat it. But it is important to note that mercury-contaminated fish are the main source of human exposure to this toxic heavy metal. While freshwater fish and large, long-living fish generally accumulate the highest levels, a government test of fish pulled from nearly 300 streams in the USA found every one of them was contaminated with some level of mercury. Mercury is a neurotoxin especially dangerous to neurological development in infants, children and fetuses. The study found that 27% of the fish had mercury levels high enough to exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe for those who eat fish twice a week,.

5) Contaminated food

If you think that thoroughly cooking your child’s burger is an assurance that he will not get a food borne illness, think again. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food borne illnesses such as E. coli and salmonella still sicken an estimated 76 million Americans each year; 325,000 get hospitalized; and 5000 die. Many are children. Since her two year old son died from eating a tainted hamburger, Barbara Kowalcyk has devoted her life to advocate for safer food. But in many ways she is fighting an uphill battle. Since 1998 the USDA has been able to shut down a meat plant for the repeated presence of salmonella and E. coli microbes, but the federal agency has lost that power due to lawsuits from the meat and poultry industries.

While there have been cases of E.coli being found in fruits and vegetable contaminated by water containing cattle waste but it is most commonly found in ground beef. According to Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer organization, slaughter house workers kill and gut as many as 350 animals per hour and are under tremendous pressure to work faster, causing errors such as puncturing intestines, bladders and bowels during cutting which releases waste matter that ultimately gets ground up into burgers. As Eric Schlosser reports in his powerful documentary Food Inc., mass-produced ground beef hamburgers are composed of pieces of thousands of different cows. If one of those pieces of meat is contaminated with fecal matter, the whole lot is contaminated. According to Gail Eisnitz author of Slaughterhouse  it is not a question of “if” there is fecal matter in your family’s meat but “how much.”

Make That Change!

Whether you go ovo-lacto vegetarian (no animals), lacto vegetarian (no animals, eggs or dairy) or vegan, you stand a good chance of making a difference in the health of your family and the planet. The animals will want to thank you too. According to PETA by switching to a vegetarian diet you will save more than 100 animals each year.

Food has a lot of emotional meaning for most people and making changes, even when you want to, can be challenging. It can be helpful to get educated about vegetarianism and nutrition and also to share books with your child that reinforce the new family plan.

Recommended books for adults:

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins

The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Vegan Lunch Box: 130 Amazing, Animal-Free Lunches Kids and Grown-Ups Will Love by Jennifer McCann

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Marcus

Recommended books for kids:

This is Why We Don’t Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things by Ruby Roth

Herb, The Vegetarian Dragon by Jules Bass and Debbie Harter

Each Living Thing by Joanne Ryder and Ashley Wolff

Hey Little Ant by Phillip Hoose, Hannah Hoose, and Debbie Tilley

‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey

* A condensed version of this article appeared in Los Angeles Family Magazine March 2010

This year I asked my husband and kids for a chicken… a live one for Mother’s Day. I don’t need another piece of jewelry or flowers that will die. I need to know that I am making a difference in the world and that I am modeling good values to my kids. So often parents try to get their children to be charitable around their birthdays (“Let’s give those extra gifts to children in need!” or “Let’s tell all your friends to make a donation instead of giving you a gift!”) but we conveniently forget to lead by example. So this year I decided to practice what I preach and asked to have a chicken sponsored on my behalf at Farm Sanctuary. We are a vegetarian family and talk to our kids about the suffering of animals quite frequently. I want them to see me model charitable behavior and for them to learn first hand what I think is really important to me.

Today I was on Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell talking about Wayne Treacy, the 15 year old boy who was arrested for beating 15 year old Josie Ratley to near death. Both teens attend Deerfield Beach Middle School, the same school where former classmate Matthew Bent and four of his friends were charged with attempted murder for dousing a classmate with alcohol and setting him on fire.

According to The National School Safety and Security Services the number of nationwide school related violent deaths have decreased from 33 in 1999-2000 to 13 in 2008-2009. But experts are reporting that when crimes are committed by kids they are increasingly violent.

It appears that we have the perfect storm of events. We have increasingly stressful home environments with a bad economy, children bombarded with violent images on television and in video games, a lack of face to face relationship with children increasingly relying on text messaging and email to communicate with friends and family, poor development of empathy skills among children combined with the impulsive underdeveloped teen brain. No wonder things are getting dangerous.

It is crucial that schools work to identify troubled students early and provide counseling. In the case of Wayne Treacy he has a father who has reportedly been arrested 43 times, a brother who committed suicide on his birthday, and the same day that he beat Josie Ratley unconscious, his girlfriend broke up with him. In retrospect it is clear that this kid was a time bomb waiting to go off.

In light of the revelation about Jesse James allegedly cheating on Sandra Bullock, I have been getting asked a lot of questions about cheating. Why do men cheat? Why would a man cheat on a beautiful movie star like Sandra Bullock? If people like Sandra Bullock, Uma Thurman, and Halle Berry can’t “keep their man” what hope do the rest of us have?

The statistics on men and cheating vary tremendously according to an American Sexual Behavior study, 22 percent of married men cheat. Yet infidelity researcher and author of The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It Gary Neuman found in his research that 1 in 2.7 men cheat.

Historically we have been lead to believe that men cheat primarily because they seek variety in their sexual partners. But Neuman’s work debunks that myth. Ninety-two percent of men in his study said the affair was not primarily about the sex. “The majority said it was an emotional disconnection, specifically a sense of feeling underappreciated. A lack of thoughtful gestures,” says Neuman.

Further supporting the idea that affairs are not really about sex is Neuman’s other finding that 88 percent of the men surveyed said the other women were no better looking or in no better shape than their own wives which supports the idea that you don’t have to be a supermodel to “keep your man.”

On Monday, The Royal College of Psychiatrists called on the media to stop promoting unhealthy body images and glamorizing eating disorders. Recognizing that the media contributed to unhealthy body image and eating disorders, the group has asked for three changes:

1. More people with diverse body shapes represented by advertisers and in the press.

2. Putting an end to the use of underweight models.

3. The use of a kite mark scheme to alert readers when an image has been digitally manipulated or airbrushed.

According to Dr. Adrienne Key of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Eating Disorders Section, “There is a growing body of research that shows the media plays a part in the development of eating disorder symptoms – particularly in adolescents and young people.” Studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between how much exposure a female has to contemporary media and the frequency of eating disordered symptoms she experiences. One study in which women viewed slides of overweight, average, and thin models found that exposure to thin models resulted in lower self-esteem and decreased weight satisfaction. As bad as that statistic shows this situation is for adult women, children are even more vulnerable.

Up to half of the older elementary school girls read teen magazines at least occasionally and one quarter read them twice a week. Often, the girls will read these magazine to get ideas of how they “should” look. One study of eight to 11 year old girls found that they regularly compared themselves to fashion models and other media images and felt bad about the comparison.

In other cultures, outside of the United States, the rate of eating disorders has risen in direct correlation to the influx of American exports, such as television programs and feature films, which bring with them new concepts of beauty and femininity as well as Western clothing, which is geared towards the slimmer figures. For example, in Fiji, after being exposed to American television for only three years, Fijian teens who had never before been exposed to Western culture experienced significant changes in their attitudes and behaviors towards food and body image. In this culture where a comment like “you look fat today” was once considered a compliment, the standard of attractiveness has changed. As a result, the teen risk for eating disorders quickly doubled to 29 percent, while 15 percent of Fijian high school girls started vomiting for weight control (a five fold increase), 74 percent of Fijian teens said they felt “too big or too fat” at least some of the time, and 62 percent said they had dieted in the past month. The less time your children are spending exposed to media images the better off they will be.

Holding and rocking a baby is very instinctual and any parent knows it feels wonderful. But did you know that it is also advantageous to your child’s development? Here are a few reasons why:

1. It helps digestion. According the Ashley Montagu, author of the book Touching: The Human Significance of Skin, rocking assists the movement of the intestine like a pendulum and thus serves to improve digestion and absorption.

2. It calms the baby. Researchers have found that we naturally rock our babies at the same 60-70 cycles per minute pace that they experience in utero. Also, the synchrony that tends to result in the parent and infants heart rate recreates the familiar environment that was so soothing in utero.

3. It helps the inner ear. Part of the calming effect comes from the inner ear, which maintains equilibrium. Rocking helps infants to find their place in space and ultimately to keep their heads up in a neutral position.

4. It helps promote healthy weight gain. A study of twins, where one twin was rocked thirty minutes twice a day and the other was not rocked at all, found that the rocked infant gained weight faster than the non-rocked twin in every single instance.

5. Rocked infants are better able to track visual and auditory stimuli. Professor Mary Neal’s study of rocked infants found that, not only were rocked infants better able to follow visual and auditory stimuli but, they also gained more weight than non-rocked infants in a control group.

6. It helps circulation. According to Montagu, “Rocking, in both babies and adults, increases cardiac output and is helpful to circulation; it promotes respiration and discourages lung congestion; [and] it stimulates muscle tone….”

So after three years, three months, two weeks and five days of a screen-free existence (not even as background noise), my daughters Quincy and Mendez watched television for the first time. Why did we wait so long to introduce them to videos, movies and television programs you might wonder? Isn’t it educational? Aren’t there benefits? Well, for children under the age of three, not so much. Even The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents wait until at least two years of age.

In the past five years I have spent a lot of time reading research on the effects of television on young minds and have come to the conclusion that children are best served by waiting to watch television until they are at least three years old. I feel strongly about the value of waiting and have written extensively about the reasons I found compelling in my “Dr. Jenn” column in Los Angeles Family Magazine, my book The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy Confident Kids , and in my upcoming book SuperBaby: 12 Ways to Give Your Child a Head Start in the First 3 Years.

But I digress. Back to my own experience in opening this virtual Pandora’s box. Prior to introducing it, my husband and I decided to do a few things:

We made a screen time plan. We decided that television would not be a normal, daily event; that we would only watch it one time each week and that it would only be for a maximum of 30 minutes. We let our children know this plan in advance.

We chose commercial-free shows. By choosing a DVD or a show on the DVR, parents can avoid advertising which targets children, especially children of an age that don’t yet understand the difference between programming and commercials. These damaging, targeted commercials are incredibly effective at convincing them they need to make their parents buy their products and low nutrient foods in order to be happy.

We prescreened the shows. In addition to reading reviews and looking at the literature about children’s programming, we pre-screened the shows to make sure there wasn’t anything objectionable to us or which did not meet our parenting values or philosophy.

We made the experience an event. We decided that television viewing would be done as a family and that the children would never watch by themselves. We engaged our kids during the program by asking them about things in the program and followed up by doing activities related to the shows so that they would have a multidimensional experience.

So what did we watch? This has been the most frequent question I have been asked. The first two times we sat the kids down to watch TV, we watched Signing Time! which is one of my favorite children’s series. The show is filled with catchy music and sign language, the images are not overwhelming, the children are diverse in look and ethnicity and the messages are sweet. Our children have been listening to Signing Time! CDs and reading Signing Time! books since they were babies so this was an easy first step for us. Week one we watched Everyday Signs and week two we watched ABC Signs.

The next time we watched a video called Wonder Pets which is a terrific, operetta-like cartoon about animals who help save other animals. While we watched the show we occasionally stopped to try new signs or talk about what was happening, which took the experience of sitting and watching from being a completely passive time to an interactive and engaging activity and opportunity for bonding and learning with your kids. We also spent some time after watching Signing Time! listening to the CDs and practicing our signing.

So far this has been a very positive experience for both kids and parents. I can see how easy it would be to use the television as a babysitter or to turn it on when we are out of creative parenting ideas (or energy). However, we have made a commitment to do our best to provide interesting and educational moments so it is important to us to make our television experience both entertaining as well as a learning opportunity. I am especially excited for my kids to see things that they would not normally see in their own environment such as baby animals in the Serengeti, Olympic figure skaters, and foreign cultures and locales.

Between Tiger Woods’ many affairs, former presidential candidate John Edwards denying being the baby daddy to his mistresses’ two year old child, Charlie Sheen’s alleged domestic violence and Governor Mark Sanford’s highly publicized tryst in Buenos Aires, people have been asking me a lot about forgiveness.

While marital infidelity is never acceptable, there is a big difference between an impulsive, one time, drunken mistake and an ongoing, lengthy affair that involves ongoing lies and deceit. It was not surprising that Jenny Sanford filed for divorce last month given the level and frequency of deception in this case which was off the charts and from which it would have been nearly impossible to recover.

 Thinking about forgiving someone who has harmed you? Here are the four “R’s” I recommend you examine before deciding whether or not to forgive:

1. Take responsibility. Has the person taken responsibility for their actions or are they still blaming, accusing or making excesses?
2. Show remorse. Does the person seem genuinely sorry for what they have done or are they just paying you lip service? Do they seem to genuinely understand why what they did was wrong and how it has harmed others?
3. Take steps to avoid repeating the same kind of mistake. What is being done to assure the same mistake is not going to happen again? Has the person started therapy or religious counseling? Has s/he agreed to stop spending time with someone with whom they have experienced temptation? Has s/he agreed to be open and candid with information, emails, cell phone information or remove him/herself from social networking sites?
4. Work to repair the damage. A commitment to the relationship and working to repair the damage caused are important parts of moving forward. It takes time to heal broken trust.

 There is one exception to all of this and that is domestic violence. Domestic violence is a deal breaker. Regardless of promises, it is likely to escalate and can end in murder. According to the FBI, one third of all murder victims are killed by an intimate partner. If you are experiencing domestic violence you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE (7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224 for help.