clean your plate is not always the way to go for healthy kids

According to obesity researchers, the United States obesity rate has more than doubled for preschoolers and adolescents-and more than tripled for ages 6 to 11-over the past 30 years. Obese children are at greater risk for health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, and often carry these problems into adulthood.

So, how do parents help children, and the entire family, eat healthier, both at home and away-from-home?

"Talk to your pediatrician, family doctor or registered dietitian to determine the healthiest weight goals for the entire family," said nutrition expert Jenifer Bland-Campbell, "then make a plan to tackle the issue."

She offers these tips to help parents help their families eat more healthfully:

• Eat at least one meal together daily, at regular intervals to discourage snacking.

• Prepare healthy dishes for the whole family, not just special foods for an overweight child.

• Don't use food as a reward, comfort or punishment.

• Watch portions. "Clean your plate" is not always the way to go.

• Eat slowly. It takes almost 20 minutes for the brain to register that the body is full.

• Encourage water or skim or 1% milk instead of high-calorie, sugary drinks.

• Getting kids to eat at least five servings of vegetables and fruits each day will not be easy, but focus on the colors to make it more fun. Visit 5aday. org for more tips.

• Use low-fat or fat-free dressings, mayonnaise and dairy items at home as if they are the full-fat versions. Kids will take your cues. Ask for the same items on the side when eating away-from-home.

• Take the stairs. When you go shopping, park the car farther away from the store and walk.

• Limit television, video games or computer time.

• Replace mayonnaise and cheese on burgers or sandwiches with catsup, mustard or barbecue sauce.

• Stick with items that are baked, broiled, steamed or poached-not fried.

• Ask for nutritional information when eating out.

• Look beyond the children's menu, often limited to fried, high-calorie, high-fat foods. Split one healthier adult entrйe between two children.

• Ask for a takeout container and put some of the food in before you eat.

• Ask that bread, beverages and tortilla chips be served with the meal, not beforehand.

"Parents can help children reach wellness goals by first making healthy changes at home, then teaching kids what to do away from home," said Bland-Campbell. "Healthy eating does not happen overnight, but children take cues from their parents and will learn behaviors over time."

Bland-Campbell is a registered dietitian with ARAMARK, a company that manages food service programs at businesses, colleges, hospitals, and approximately 4,000 schools across the country.

You can find research on the away-from-home nutritional preferences of Americans at ARAMARK'S Web site, diningstyle. com. There, parents can find their own dining style and receive tips from dietitians on more ways to eat better.

Measuring for children s patterns

At one point or another in your sewing career, you have likely put together a cute little outfit for your son or daughter, only to have it a little tight in the chest, or the arms are just a tad short. A lot of that can be avoided if you know how to take the right measurements prior to making the garments.

You don’t want to needlessly spend your time and effort on something that isn’t done right. If you are too big, then at least you can bring in the seams and try to fix the garment. But, too short, and you use up a whole lot of fabric. This article will describe how to take the proper measurements for a child, so you can get them into the outfit you have sewn.

Measuring for height – This is probably the simplest one to do – just as long as your child is not wearing shoes. Shoes can add between an inch and 2.5 inches to the height of the child – making your measurements way off. Have your child stand with their back straight against a wall. Measure from the bottom and back of the heel, to the crown of the head.

Chest – You should measure for the chest around the largest part of the chest. Not when the chest is expanded, but at the part where you will get the greatest measurement around this area. It is most often right underneath the armpits.

Waist – The natural waist is the best place to measure for kids, but figuring out the natural waist might be the toughest chore. This is usually the area about two to three inches above the top of the hipbone.

Hips – This one is simple. We all know where the hips are, so we need to measure around the fullest part of the hips. Without an accurate measurement in this area, our kids might not be able to pull up their new slacks!

Arm – To get an accurate measurement of the arm, you need to first measure from the neckline to the tip of the shoulder bone (towards the arm). Make a note of this measurement. Then give the arm a slight bend, and without releasing the tape (from the original measurement), measure all of the way down to the wrist. Subtract the shoulder width from the overall measurement and you have your most accurate arm length measurement.

Pant length – You need to measure both the inseam and the outside of the leg in order to get a good measurement for the pant length. The outside seam will be the overall pant length, and is the most important for the proper length. This is measured from the waist point to the length you wish the pant leg to be.

The inseam is for the proper fit in the midsection and crotch area. To measure the inseam, you need to measure from the crotch area to the length you want the pant leg.

Final tips and hints for measurements:

Don’t be afraid to err on the larger side. Unless you are trying to tailor something to fit perfectly then don’t worry. Also, kids are going to grow, so by making it 1/4" bigger in one area isn’t going to hurt.

When measuring (especially for pant and arm length), you want to keep in mind the comfort of your children, over making it fit exact.

When choosing a pattern for your child, match the height of your child first, then the chest, and finally waist and hip measurements.

If your child has measurements that fit between two pattern sizes, go with the larger pattern size.

With a firm idea of how to make proper measurements on your children, you can now go ahead and tailor that new blouse, or a great set of summer shorts!

The challenges of single parenting

Having worked with parents for the last 35 years and written books on parenting and relationships, I’ve discovered that one of the greatest challenges for us as parents is to be loving role-models for our children, showing our children through our behavior how to take personal responsibility for their own feelings and needs. Our children need to learn from our role-modeling how to nurture themselves within and how to create a sense of safety in the world. In families where both a mother and father are present, both parents can participate in nurturing the child emotionally and taking care of the child in the world, and both parents can role-model what it looks like to do this for themselves.

Single parents have a far greater challenge - they have to be both mother and father to the child. Mothering energy is that energy that nurtures while fathering energy is that energy that protects in the world - that is, earning money, setting boundaries with others, speaking up for oneself. While our society often defines women as the nurturers and men as the protectors, both men and women are capable of both nurturing and protecting in the world.

In order for a single parent to successfully be both mother and father, he or she must have learned how to be both mother and father to the Child within. In other words, we have to have learned how to nurture our own Inner Child - how to take responsibility for our own fears, pain, anger, hurt, and disappointment, and how to take care of our Inner Child in the world - earn money, set boundaries, and so on. There is no way to successfully teach our children these skills until we are doing them ourselves, which means that each of us needs to be in a process of learning how to do this.

We have developed a process that teaches us how to care for and nurture ourselves, while also loving others. This process, called Inner Bonding, teaches us how to become a loving Adult to our own Inner Child and to our actual children. Inner Bonding is a six-step psychospiritual process that can be learned and practiced daily, and that leads to the development of a spiritually-connected loving inner Adult.

Inner Bonding defines the Inner Child as our core self, who we are when we are born - our natural creativity, intuition, playfulness, imagination, talents, feelings, and ability to love. Our Child is our inner experience. Our Adult is everything we learn after we are born. It is our thoughts, beliefs, and ability to take action. We start learning how to be an Adult from the moment we are born through watching our parents and other caregivers. The Adult we learn to be is a child-adult, the part of us that learned many fears and false beliefs and learned addictive ways, such as using substances, TV, spending, anger, or compliance to avoid pain. A true loving Adult is that part of us that is spiritually connected to a Higher Source of truth and love and is able to bring that truth and love down into the Child and share it with others. The adult many of us operate from most of the time is really a wounded child masquerading as an adult. It is our unhealed wounded self that causes us problems with ourselves and our children. Inner Bonding is a process for healing the wounded self and developing a spiritually-connected loving Adult.

In Inner Bonding, there are only two possible intents at any given moment: the intent to learn about love and the intent to protect against and avoid pain. The intent to learn says that we want to learn about our own pain in order to understand what we need to do to be loving to our Inner Child and others; The intent to protect says that we want to avoid experiencing our pain at all cost. The child-adult is always in the intent to protect and the loving Adult is always in the intent to learn.

The six-steps of Inner Bonding are:

1. The willingness to become aware of our pain rather than protect against it with our various addictions.

2. The conscious decision to move into the intent to learn.

3. Dialoguing with our wounded self to discover the false beliefs and resulting behavior behind the pain. Releasing anger and pain in appropriate ways.

4. Dialoguing with our Higher Power to learn about truth and loving behavior.

5. Taking loving action in behalf or our Inner Child.

6. Evaluating the action.

All parents needs to be in a process of healing themselves. It is particularly important for single parents to be in this process since they are the primary role-models for their children. The more you heal the fears and false beliefs of your wounded self, the more loving you will naturally be with yourself and your children. Learning to utilize these six step throughout the day, especially in times of anger, fear, anxiety and stress, will eventually heal the false beliefs leading to these difficult feelings.

Parental control - you

With all the talk about the technology available for parental control, the experts all agree that parental control starts with the parent. We examine what the parent can do to keep their kids out of trouble.

There is a lot of talk going around about all the different ways that you can keep your kid from wandering into chat rooms, viewing adult sites, watching R rated TV programs and just about everything else that you want to keep your kid from. But studies show that the best parental control to keep your kids out of trouble is you.

This may not be very popular with parents who feel they don't have the time or shouldn't have to watch over their kids 24/7, but in the old days, that's how things were done. True, we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have cable TV with all its nudity and violence and we didn't have pornography just a click away, but kids were still kids and there were plenty of ways for them to get into trouble. And the principals that applied then apply now as well.

The experts in this area recommend the following simple things to keep your kids from getting into things that you just don't want them to get into. Again, these are experts' views and not necessarily the views of this writer. We're only reporting what the professionals say.

For TV it's still the same as it was years ago. For starters, kids don't get their own TV in their rooms. They want to watch something, they come into the living room or recreation room or wherever the TV is located and watch there with the rest of the family. Then, whatever it is your kid is watching, you as the parent make sure you monitor the program. If you're concerned with your kid turning on a pay station then simply don't have them in the house. We need to set examples for our kids. We can't do that if we're spending our time watching sex and violence ourselves.

Also, make sure you have designated viewing times. Most adult oriented material is shown after prime time begins. You may want to cut off the time your child can watch TV at around 10 PM. Earlier if your child is very young.

As for the Internet, this becomes a bit more of a problem because sex and violence are there 24/7. In the case of the Internet though it's really no different from the TV. No computer access in the child's room. The child uses the same computer as everyone else in the house, preferably in an open area where a parent can easily see what the child is viewing. Make your child aware of what is out there and tell him so he understands that he's to go nowhere near these sites. Explain to him that it is very easy to check if he has been to a racist or porn site and the punishment for doing so will be severe. Again, you need to set an example for your child. If you're going to know whether or not he has been to these sites, which you can easily check with your computer's history, then you as the parent have to make sure that you are also nowhere near them.

Many may find the experts' advice on this matter harsh and unreasonable, but they all unanimously agree that the problem with kids doing what they're not supposed to do starts at home.

It's the way it always was and it's the way it will always be.