Many parents grew up with medical adages or advice that have since been proven by scientists to be incorrect or outdated. Here are five common myths about children’s eye health and the medical reality behind them, written by the physicians at The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Myth #1. Sitting too close to the TV will damage your child’s eyes.

Fact: “Sitting in front of the TV or a computer screen for four hours may hinder your child’s intellectual development but it will not damage their eyes,” notes Dr. Mark Borchert, division head of The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Nearly half of all kids spend four hours or more per day using computers and electronic devices, according to a recent national survey. Dr. Borchert notes that children can develop blurred vision, headaches and other problems when focusing too long on one object, such as a computer screen. Long video game sessions may have adverse consequences such as reduced social interaction or less time doing homework, however, they will not permanently damage a child’s eyes.

“If a child is sitting too close to the TV or computer screen, it is probably because he needs glasses to see well. Sitting very close to the screen will not cause them to need glasses,” said Dr. Borchert.

To make your child’s computer station more comfortable, make sure the screen is at eye level. Reduce screen glare by using a desk lamp with a dimmer so there isn’t a big contrast between the brightness of the screen and the room. Make sure your child can’t see her own reflection on the screen.

Enforce the 20/20 rule. Have your child take a 20-second break for every 20 minutes of screen time, either by getting up and stretching or by looking out the window.

The concern about TV screens damaging young eyes originated in the 1960s when some early color TV sets were discovered to be emitting high amounts of X-rays. The problem was soon corrected and modern TV monitors, including older tube-type sets and new LCD models, are safe and do not emit any dangerous rays.

Myth #2. Eating lots of carrots will improve a child’s eyesight.

Fact: Carrots do contain Vitamin A, which is a key ingredient in good overall nutrition, however, eating a lot of them will not improve your eyesight. Recent research findings have found that eating foods rich in Lutein, a plant nutrient, may help prevent age-related macular degeneration, one of the most common causes of blindness in older adults. Lutein is a carotenoid, natural pigment, found in dark green leafy vegetables such as spinach, plus various fruits and corn.

“The research is very preliminary, but it does suggest that Lutein can help protect against adults developing macular degeneration. Eating a balanced diet with plenty of green vegetables should be sufficient for most families,” said Dr. Borchert.

Carrots reputation as eyesight enhancers is partially due to the fact that Vitamin A sources are helpful in treating night blindness, also called nyctalopia, which can be caused by Vitamin A deficiency.

Myth #3. Only adults can wear contact lenses safely.

Fact: Children of all ages, even infants, can wear contact lenses safely if the correct procedures are followed. Under the age of 10, an adult will need to insert, remove and clean the lens. Many children over 10 can handle the contact lenses (wearing and cleaning) themselves.

According to Dr. Borchert, ophthalmologists may prescribe contact lenses for infants and very young children to enhance vision development when the eyes have very different prescriptions after cataract surgery, corneal scarring or diseases like Retinopathy of Prematurity.

Dr. Borchert said older children could manage their own contact lens care if they are mature and responsible. “If they make their own bed and shower on their own, they can probably safely handle their contact lens.”

He noted that it is not a good idea for elementary school children to wear contact lenses just for cosmetic reasons. Also, all contact lenses should be obtained through a physician, either an ophthalmologist (M.D.) or a doctor of optometry (O.D.).

Myth #4. Running with scissors is the leading cause of eye injury in children.

Fact. A recent national survey found that approximately 59% of pediatric eye injuries occur during sport and recreational events. The National Eye Institute also states that baseball is the sport responsible for the greatest number of eye injuries in children aged 14 and younger. However, basketball is the leading cause of eye injuries in those aged 15 to 24.

According to Prevent Blindness America, 72 percent of all sports-related eye injuries are to those aged 25 and younger. Yet, only 15 percent of children wear eye protection. Children should be encouraged to wear the appropriate safety eyewear, such as goggles or face masks, for every sport in which they participate.

“We need a cultural change in this country. Children who play contact sports such as basketball and baseball should be wearing eye protection – most do not. Twenty years ago, very few children wore bicycle helmets, now a parent would be considered irresponsible if she sent her child out riding without a helmet. We need the same sense of concern when children play sports,” said Dr. Borchert.

Myth #5. It is impossible to get young children to wear sunglasses.

Fact. “It is very important that young children wear sunglasses and the newer products with strap-on frames are easy for them to wear,” said Dr. Borchert.

The lens of a child allows 70% more UV rays to reach the delicate retina than in an adult. Most parents are aware of the critical need to protect their children’s skin from UV exposure with sun block, yet few insist their children wear sunglasses.

“If it is bright enough outdoors for you to be wearing sunglasses, your child should also be wearing them,” said Dr. Borchert.

New, colorful sunglasses with Velcro straps, designed for infants and toddlers are available in stores and via the Internet. They are comfortable and provide excellent protection from UV rays and foreign objects. Most young children adapt to them easily.

The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is an international referral center known for its family friendly environment of children afflicted with all forms of eye disease and provides a full range of inpatient and outpatient services. It is the largest pediatric ophthalmology program in the nation with multiple subspecialty programs that are considered to be among today’s finest resources for diagnosis, treatment and research. . The Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is among the largest and most productive pediatric research facilities in the United States.

Founded in 1901, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has been treating the most seriously ill and injured children in Los Angeles for more than a century, and it is acknowledged throughout the United States and around the world for its leadership in pediatric and adolescent health. Childrens Hospital is one of America’s premier teaching hospitals, affiliated with the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California since 1932.

Since 1990, U.S. News & World Report and its panel of board-certified pediatricians have named Childrens Hospital Los Angeles one of the top pediatric facilities in the nation. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is one of only 10 children’s hospitals in the nation – and the only children’s hospital on the West Coast – ranked in all 10 pediatric specialties in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and named to the magazine’s “Honor Roll” of children’s hospitals.

[Written by American Thoracic Society]

New research hints that the common belief that kids who go to daycare have lower rates of asthma and allergy later in life might be nothing more than wishful thinking. While young children in daycare definitely do get more illnesses and experience more respiratory symptoms as a result, any perceived protection these exposures afford against asthma and allergy seem to disappear by the time the child hits the age of eight.

“We found no evidence for a protective or harmful effect of daycare on the development of asthma symptoms, allergic sensitization, or airway hyper-responsiveness at the age of eight years,” wrote Johan C de Jongste, M.D., Ph.D., of Erasmus University in the Netherlands and principle investigator of the study. “Early daycare was associated with more airway symptoms until the age of four years, and only in children without older siblings, with a transient decrease in symptoms between four and eight years.”

The results are published in the September 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a journal of the American Thoracic Society.

The researchers prospectively followed a birth cohort of nearly 4,000 Dutch children over the course of eight years in the Prevention and Incidence of Asthma and Mite Allergy (PIAMA) Study. Parents completed questionnaires during pregnancy, at three and 12 months, and then yearly until the child reached the age of eight, and reported their children’s airway symptoms annually. At the age of eight, more than 3,500 of the children were also assessed for specific allergies. Some also underwent testing for lung function and airway hyper-responsiveness.

Daycare use was assessed each year, and the children were categorized in early attendees (first attendance before two years of age), late attendees (first attendance between two and four years of age) and non-attendees.

They found that children who started daycare early were twice as likely to experience wheezing in the first year of life compared to those who didn’t go to daycare. However, as the children aged, there was a shift: by age five, there was a trend for less wheezing among early attendees: they were about 80 percent as likely as non-attendees to wheeze, but this was not statistically significant. What’s more, the shift reversed itself by age eight, when there was no association between early daycare attendance and wheezing at all.

Late daycare attendees had similar, but less pronounced and statistically nonsignificant effects. The effects of daycare on wheeze were not different between boys and girls, but were more marked in children with older siblings.

“Children with older siblings and early daycare had more than fourfold higher risk of frequent respiratory infections and more than twofold risk of wheezing in the first year compared to children without older siblings and daycare,” said Dr. de Jongste. “Importantly, children exposed to both early daycare and older siblings experienced most infections and symptoms in early childhood, without a protective effect on wheeze, inhaled steroid prescription or asthma symptoms until the age of eight years.”

Despite the widespread acceptance of the idea that these early exposures pay off in later health benefits, the data in this study do not support that belief. If anything, this study suggests that these exposures cause more airway symptoms early in life with no counterbalancing benefit later.

“Early daycare merely seems to shift the burden of respiratory morbidity to an earlier age where it is more troublesome than at a later age,” said Dr. de Jongste. “[E]arly daycare should not be promoted for reasons of preventing asthma and allergy.”

Once our children outgrow diapers, we all hope that they will enjoy comfortable nights of sleep in a dry bed.  Also, more practically, we want them to be able to sleep over at friends’ houses or in a hotel bed without worry that they will soil the bed or suffer embarrassment.  But what about the child who, despite diligent night-training, continues to sleep right through the urge to use the bathroom. Is it his fault? Is it ours?

The following is written by Washington University In St. Louis.

Nighttime bedwetting, or primary nocturnal enuresis, is a common condition in children, and most outgrow it. About 15 percent of five-year-olds and about 5 percent of 10-year-olds wet the bed involuntarily unrelated to an underlying medical condition. The condition happens more often in boys than in girls and tends to run in families. Nighttime bedwetting becomes a real problem when it starts affecting children’s socialization – when they can’t go on sleepovers or attend camp.

Bedwetting is not due to a behavioral or mental problem or laziness of the child, says Paul Austin, M.D., associate professor of surgery at Washington University in St. Louis and a pediatric urologist at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Rather, some of the most common causes of bedwetting include:

• Genetic factors: Children with one or both parents who wet the bed as children have a much higher risk of wetting the bed.
• Problems with the kidney: lack of a hormone that is produced at night. The hormone, anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) or vasopressin, is produced normally at night to limit the formation of urine during sleep.
• Problems with the brain: a full bladder fails to wake up the child.
• Problems with the bladder: the bladder is too small for his or her age. The bladder should hold, in ounces, the child’s age plus two.

All of these common causes are temporary and resolve as the child matures. Parents should exercise patience with their child and understand that their child is not wetting the bed on purpose. In addition, parents should encourage the child and let him or her know that they will eventually be able to stay dry at night, Austin says.

Some other steps parents can take include:
• Limiting liquids two hours before bedtime.
• Encouraging the child to go to the bathroom before bed.
• Waking the child during the night to go to the bathroom.
• Making sure the child gets enough rest and doesn’t get overtired.
• Avoiding foods before bed that may cause sensitivity or increase urine production, such as dairy, carbonated drinks, caffeine, chocolate, artificially colored drinks, candy, licorice, citrus and melons.

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Washington University School of Medicine’s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked third in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

No less a revered medical institution than the Mayo Clinic, the saviors of severely medically challenged children nationwide, have studied and declared that anesthetics used during cesarean births do not cause children to have brain problems.

Mayo Clinic researchers have found that children exposed to anesthesia during Cesarean section are not at any higher risk for learning disabilities later in life than children not delivered by C-section. These findings are reported in the current issue of the journal Anesthesiology.

“We found that the incidence of learning disabilities was equal between children who were delivered vaginally and those who were delivered via C-section but with general anesthesia,” says Juraj Sprung, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist who led the study. “It’s reassuring that the anesthetics required for Cesarean delivery do not appear to cause long-term brain problems.”

The study was conducted with data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project. Researchers analyzed the medical records of 5,320 children born between 1976 and 1982 to mothers living in Olmsted County. They compared birth records with scholastic achievement and IQ tests administered to the children later in life as part of their schooling.

The study builds on a previous project, reported in March, which found that children exposed to a single dose of anesthesia during the first three years of life had no increased risk for learning disabilities, but those exposed multiple times had an almost doubled risk for later identification of learning disabilities.

Prolonged exposure to anesthetics has been shown to cause brain abnormalities in young animals, which was the impetus behind these two studies. Scientists think that the brains of young animals and humans are more vulnerable to a variety of problems because they are undergoing rapid growth. The brain is forming vital connections between cells during this time.

Not only did the researchers find that the use of anesthesia during delivery was not harmful to the baby, they found that babies delivered by Cesarean using an epidural anesthetic (which numbs only the lower region of the body and does not involve the mother going to sleep) had a substantially reduced risk for learning disabilities later in life. “The risk was reduced by about 40 percent compared to children delivered vaginally and those delivered via Cesarean section but with general anesthesia,” says Dr. Sprung.

Study co-author and Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist Randall Flick, M.D., cautions that because this study is preliminary, changes to medical practice should not be considered at this point. “What we’ve found is an association between two things,” says Dr. Flick. “One is the way a child was delivered, either vaginally or under regional or general anesthesia. The other is a difference in the incidence of learning disabilities as the child attended school. It’s important to recognize there may be many other factors that impact learning disabilities.”

The team is investigating whether use of an epidural on a mother during natural labor has similar effects on the incidence of learning disabilities in children as a C-section with an epidural.

Dr. Flick says the research team also is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a related study that looks more closely at young children with specific medical conditions who have been exposed to anesthesia and compares them to children with similar medical conditions who were not exposed to anesthesia. The study is part of a national SAFEKIDS Initiative that the FDA is undertaking with several academic and clinical institutions to study the effects of anesthetics and sedatives on brain development in infants and young children.

Funding for this study was provided in part by the Mayo Clinic Center for Translational Science Activities (CTSA). The Mayo Clinic CTSA is part of a national consortium working to improve how biomedical research is conducted across the nation. The consortium, funded through Clinical and Translational Science Awards, shares a common vision to accelerate the time it takes for laboratory discoveries to become treatments for patients and to engage communities in clinical and translational science. It is also fulfilling the critical need to train the next generation of clinical researchers. The CTSA initiative is led by the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health.

Additional co-authors include Robert Wilder, M.D., Ph.D.; Slavica Katusic, M.D.; Tasha Pike; Mariella Dingli, M.D.; Darrell Schroeder; William Barbaresi, M.D.; Andrew Hanson; and David Warner, M.D. Another co-author is Stephen Gleich, M.D., of the Primary Children’s Medical Center, Salt Lake City.

For years, doctors and scientists have told the public to drink milk, eat dairy products and take calcium supplements to improve bone health and prevent osteoporosis. The problem is they’re wrong.  A new book “Building Bone Vitality”, co-authored by Amy Lanou, UNC Asheville assistant professor of health and wellness, and noted health writer Michael Castleman, dispels the calcium myth using the latest clinical studies and medical information.

The authors’ suggested eating plan includes six to nine daily servings of fruits and vegetables and no more than one or two servings of high-protein foods such as meat, dairy and eggs daily. Why? Because protein is composed of amino acids. As the body digests high-protein foods, the blood becomes more acidic, leaching calcium from the bones.

For example, have you ever taken Tums for acid indigestion? Its active ingredient, calcium carbonate, neutralizes stomach acid because it’s highly alkaline. To neutralize excess acid in the bloodstream, the body draws the same compound from bone. A high-protein diet of meat, dairy and eggs draws calcium from bone and eventually causes osteoporosis, the authors say.

Of course, fruits and vegetables also contain some protein, but much less than meat, dairy and eggs. Fruits and vegetables also contain a great deal of alkaline material. When you eat these foods, only a small amount of acid enters the bloodstream along with a great deal of alkaline material, which neutralizes the acid. Therefore, the body does not have to draw calcium compounds out of bone.

“Fruits and vegetables keep calcium in bone where it belongs,” said Lanou.

To further back up their theory, Lanou and Castleman pored over completed human clinical trials and found that they also refute the calcium claim. Since 1975, 140 clinical trials have explored calcium’s effects on osteoporotic fracture risk. Two-thirds of these studies show no benefit from high calcium intake. Overall, the clinical trials dealing with fracture prevention run two-to-one against calcium, the authors noted.

Finally, the authors reviewed research on the impact of exercise on bone health. They found that the consensus of research shows that just 30 to 60 minutes of daily walking is enough exercise to build strong bones.

“The good news is that you don’t have to join a gym or sweat buckets,” said Castleman. “But you do have to walk every day.”

Lanou, who holds a doctorate in human nutrition from Cornell University, joined the UNC Asheville faculty in 2005. She has played an instrumental role in creating programs and coursework for UNC Asheville’s North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness, which focuses on childhood obesity, workplace wellness and healthy aging. Previously, she taught nutrition at Cornell University and Ithaca College. She is the author of “Healthy Eating for Life for Children” and has written or delivered more than 50 scientific articles, reports and presentations on bone health, dairy products or the health benefits of plant foods. Lanou also serves as senior nutrition scientist for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preventative medicine through good nutrition.

Source: University of North Carolina at Asheville

Aside from the obvious nutritional benefits of ingesting natural sugars from their source, eating foods created from refined sugar of any kind seems to fall firmly within the jurisdiction of the epithet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This article was written by The Corn Refiners Association so many will choose to take this article with a grain of … sugar, but even though it is written by the most interested party, I am satisfied that my parental questions and objections have been answered with a minimal amount of sugar coating.

Just to be clear, for those who tend to skim instead of read (and then make all kinds of angry comments), this article does not claim that high fructose corn syrup is as healthy as natural sugar consumed concurrent with, say, a slice of watermelon.  It simply says that it is no better or worse than any other refined sugar.

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Three top researchers corrected inaccuracies and misunderstandings concerning high fructose corn syrup’s impact on the American diet. They also examined how the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers this sweetener in light of the upcoming 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans in a session, High Fructose Corn Syrup: Sorting Myth from Reality, at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.

“Contrary to its name, high fructose corn syrup is essentially a corn sugar,” stated sweetener expert John S. White, Ph.D., president of White Technical Research. “Recent marketing claims that sugar is healthier than high fructose corn syrup are misleading to consumers.”

“By every parameter yet measured in human beings, high fructose corn syrup and sugar are identical. This is not surprising since high fructose corn syrup and sugar are metabolized the same by the body, have the same level of sweetness and the same number of calories per gram,” noted James M. Rippe, M.D., cardiologist and biomedical sciences professor at the University of Central Florida.

“This is a marketing issue, not a metabolic issue,” stated David Klurfeld, Ph.D., national program leader for human nutrition in USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and editor of the June 2009 Journal of Nutrition supplement, “The State of the Science on Dietary Sweeteners Containing Fructose,” in response to recent reformulations by manufacturers of products that once contained high fructose corn syrup. “The real issue is not high fructose corn syrup. It’s that we’ve forgotten what a real serving size is. We have to eat less of everything,” he noted.

Increased Caloric Intake, Not a Single Sweetener, the Likely Cause of Obesity
Fructose-containing sweeteners — such as sugar, invert sugar, honey, fruit juice concentrates, and high fructose corn syrup — are essentially interchangeable in composition, calories, and metabolism. Replacing high fructose corn syrup in foods with other fructose-containing sweeteners will provide neither improved nutrition nor a meaningful solution to the obesity crisis, according to Dr. White. “In light of similarities in composition, sweetness, energy content, processing, and metabolism, claims that such sweetener substitutions bring nutritional benefit to children and their families appear disingenuous and misguided,” White says.

Growing Body of Evidence
The American Medical Association helped put to rest a common misunderstanding about high fructose corn syrup and obesity, stating that “high fructose syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners.” Even former critics of high fructose corn syrup dispelled myths and distanced themselves from earlier speculation about the sweetener’s link to obesity in a comprehensive scientific review published in the December 2008 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

To learn more about the latest research and facts about sweeteners, please visit SweetSurprise.com.

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CRA is the national trade association representing the corn refining (wet milling) industry of the United States. CRA and its predecessors have served this important segment of American agribusiness since 1913. Corn refiners manufacture sweeteners, ethanol, starch, bioproducts, corn oil, and feed products from corn components such as starch, oil, protein, and fiber.

The story that children far and wide are being poisoned by unwrapped Halloween candy and home-baked Halloween cookies, that there was ever a razor blade in the apple is the very definition of an urban legend. It is a myth to the extent that NO American child is on record as EVER being seriously hurt by a contaminated Trick-or-Treat bon bon.

This guest post has been reprinted with permission from Lenore Skenazy, author of the book Free-Range Kids . Lenore’s hot-off-the-press book is about “Giving Our Children The Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry”. It is a fast, funny, full-of-facts, must-read book for all parents who remember a simpler time and want it for their children. After you have pieced together enough silent moments (in between cleaning up spills and tying shoes) to finish reading Lenore’s book you will feel a lot better about hustling the kids outside to play while you put your feet up to read your next book in peace. Here is an excerpt from Free-Range Kids that busts the myth about Halloween candy poisonings.

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Heck, even I grew up being told not to eat candy that had been obviously unwrapped. But why? Was there ever really a rash of candy killings?

Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, took it upon himself to find out. He studied crime reports from Halloween dating back as far as 1958, and guess exactly how many kids he found poisoned by a stranger’s candy?

A hundred and five? A dozen? Well, one, at least?

“The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,” says the professor. The fear is completely unfounded. Now, one time, in 1974, a Texas dad did kill his own son with a poisoned Pixie Stix. “He had taken out an insurance policy on his son’s life shortly before Halloween, and I think that he probably did this on the theory that there were so many poison candy deaths, no one would ever suspect him,” says Best. “In fact, he was very quickly tried and put to death long ago.” That’s Texas for you.

And then there was a time in 1970 when a five-year-old died from ingesting heroin. But it turns out that in that instance, the boy got into his uncle’s stash and accidentally poisoned himself. Afterward, the family sprinkled heroin on some candy to make it look as if a stranger had done this hideous thing.

And, OK, there was one other time some kids were given poison on Halloween. “A woman in the 1960s was annoyed with children that she thought were too old to trick or treat, so she put ant poison in their bags,” says Best. “But it was labeled, ‘ANT POISON.’ She probably thought it was funny. Until the police arrived.”

So despite this wacky woman (who made her intentions pretty clear), we now have zero recorded instances of death by strangers’ candy. And yet look at all the things that have sprung up in response to this myth.

First and most obviously, we’ve killed the whole idea of, God forbid, baking treats for the local kids. Any cookie a kindly neighbor makes is going to be automatically dumped in the trash, so why bother? Ditto, most fruit. I’m not saying the candy companies concocted these scary rumors, but they sure aren’t knocking them down.

Then we have the concerned but misguided authorities reinforcing the fears that shouldn’t even exist. In 1995, for instance, no less a maven than Ann Landers warned her readers (basically everyone in America who wasn’t reading her twin sister, Dear Abby), “In recent years there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy.”

Reports? None substantiated. Rumors? Yes, indeed. Rumors like the ones she was spreading! And those rumors ended up actually changing the holiday. To this day, Nationwide Hospital in Columbus, Ohio — one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country — offers free x-rays of any Halloween candy a parent is worried about. …says Pam Barber, the hospital’s spokeswoman, “We have never ever discovered anything questionable…It would be great to bring back some of those [Halloween] childhood joys.”

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Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children The Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry by Lenore Skenazy is available on Amazon.com  Here’s the link to the book http://tinyurl.com/q6y7oc where there is even a charming little video featuring the author herself.  My favorite part is when she uses the expression “darn tootin’”.  She’s adorable.  The book is fantastic. Rush right out an buy it. It’ll change your perspective and you’ll never look back.

The tools and methods used or not used to deliver babies are “natural” subjective only to the culture with which one identifies.

The American definition of “natural” childbirth has come to mean giving birth in a well planned, carefully constructed environment that includes pre-selected attendants, a special location, formal training in birthing techniques, and a determination to exclude pharmaceuticals and the tools of modern medical environments.

In “The Myth of ‘Natural’ Chldbirth” by Mary Ellen Stanton, C.N.M, M.S.N., published in the Journal of Nurse-Midwifery (1), Nurse Stanton says, “It is a commonly held myth that women from traditional societies who deliver their babies in mud huts in Africa or in the South Pacific deliver ‘naturally’ without pain and without need for intervention.” She explains that their experiences of childbirth are as essentially “natural” to their culture as hospital births are to others and no methods of childbirth are uniquely superior to others, although “some modern practices are much more effective and safer than methods used in traditional societies”.(1)

According to Nurse Stanton, here are some of the various ways childbirth is experienced “naturally” throughout the world:

• Expression of pain is universal. There are no cultures in which pain and fear are not expressed.

• In the U.S. childbirth is private and attended primarily by a male stranger. In some other cultures childbirth is semi-private and only attended by females. In still other cultures childbirth is a community event where the woman spreads her legs and anyone interested in checking it out can stop by and do so.

• People induce labor by various means including: breast stimulation, sexual intercourse, herbs, vaginal lubrication, abdominal manipulation, hot bricks pressed on the abdomen, friends beating and kicking the abdomen, hanging the mother from a tree and community members pulling on the abdomen, gagging the mother so she will spasm, slapping and yelling at the mother, episiotomy, and stretching the vagina.

• All over the world women give birth utilizing every variation of sitting, standing, kneeling, leaning and squatting. Some use birthing chairs, stools or rocks.

• To induce the expulsion of the placenta mothers are asked to blow into a bottle or use snuff. The mother is shaken. People talk soothingly to the placenta, tie a string from the big toe to the umbilical cord, or remove the placenta manually.

• The umbilical cord is cut with teeth, fingernails, or surgical instruments. It is covered with dirt or feces. And in Jordan, “the cutting of the cord is delayed several hours so that the child may ‘drink in the power’ from the placenta. The placenta is then wrapped in rags and kept under a grass mat under the newborn who is next to his mother in bed.”(1)

• Immediate breastfeeding is common in some cultures, but not universal. Some cultures fast the baby until the mother has expelled all of her colostrum and her milk has come in. Some feed the baby during that interval with milk from wet-nurses or other other liquids and solids. After that, if breastfeeding is continued, attitudes toward that method of food delivery vary from indifference, tension-producing, and expedient to bonding, sexual (masturbating boy babies), and celebratory.

Rituals surrounding the birth of babies are culturally defined and as diverse as can be imagined. Based on observance of cultures the world over, certainly no “right” way to deliver a baby can be defined. And as for “natural”, we can leave that to be defined as whatever makes the mother feel the most comfortable.

It should make all mothers-to-be more comfortable to know that the kind of preparation one has prior to giving birth does not increase or decrease ones risk of having a cesarean birth or the need for the use of forceps. The Department for Woman and Child Health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden conducted a randomized study of 1087 mothers-to-be.(2) Some of them received “natural” childbirth training and some received general childbirth and parenting information classes. At the time of birth both groups had 52% epidurals, 66% spontaneous births, approximately 20% cesareans, and approximately 15% instrumental delivery (foreceps). “There were also no statistically significant differences between the groups in the satisfaction of the childbirth experience or postnatal parental stress (measured at three months).” (2)

Anything goes! Give birth under a huckleberry bush while whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show. If that’s “natural” for you its good enough for me. Just pick the method that doesn’t unduly stress you out and deliver that child so you can get busy cuddling it.
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“The Myth of ‘Natural’ Childbirth”, Mary Ellen Stanton, C.N.M., M.S.N., Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, Vol. 24, No. 2, March/April 1979

“Effects of natural childbirth preparation versus standard antenatal education on epidural rates, experience of childbirth and parental stress in mothers and fathers: a randomised controlled multicentre trial” International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG), 27 maj 2009, DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2009.02144.x.

Wired.com has spoofed the syndrome that many of us concerned parents are vulnerable to — access to and believing too much scary information and believing our children are extremely vulnerable to harm. Their June 1, 2009 piece called “Alt Text: Beware Nebulous Internet Disease” starts with this jab, “The infection typically begins when the victim reads about an unusual affliction on a news site or current-events blog. Upon reading, the victim begins to experience one or more symptoms of that disease, typically minor symptoms such as a scratchy throat or slightly reddened area of skin.” – Wired

We all consider ourselves savvy people who know where to find the answers we are looking for, but that may actually be our undoing. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Instantly believing something is going to happen to us or ours without fully comprehending the odds of contracting the problem is a misguided thing. Taking action on fear with no further information or guidance than our sense that we’d “rather be safe than sorry” is an irrational thing.

We see a tv expose’ about child prostitution in Cambodia and it is so heart-wrenching and horrifying that in subtle ways we start protecting our daughters from our own awkward, lonely, male neighbor. We read the headline “Polio Outbreak Occurs Among Amish Families In Minnesota” and rush our babies to the pediatrician, ignoring that in paragraph four the article begins to ambiguously explain that there were actually anti-bodies against polio in Minnesota (in other words “immunity to polio”).

But aren’t we just being practical? Or are we being totally bloody irrational to the point that a whole book was written about the phenomenon, we are all equally subject to it, and it affects our lives in every area from how we purchase eggs, to how we make decisions about our children’s safety? In the book “Sway: The Irresistable Pull Of Irrational Behavior” Ori and Rom Brofman pick apart our tendency to err on the side of caution. It turns out that, in short, it is human nature to totally overreact to the threat of losing something. For example: “If you reduce the price of eggs, consumers buy a little more. But when the price of eggs rises, they cut back their consumption by two and a half times…[the] research illuminates a mystery that economists have been grappling with for years. For no apparent logical reason, we overreact to perceived losses.”

The same compulsion about loss aversion is why gamblers will bet (and ultimately lose) thousands of dollars in effort to recoup an original$10 loss. Its why stubborn people stick in their heels and resist admitting error even if their erroneous claim to “right” results in harm to others. It is why many don’t let their children walk to school, play outside, drink from plastic, get vaccinations, play with old toys… Many of us can’t off-the-cuff quote credible studies about any of these dangers (yes, some can, but be truthful, without Googling, can you?), but we do know that at some point in time we have heard somebody we trust tell us that these activities were dangerous and “we’d rather be safe than sorry”.

I must encourage all parents, who tend to feel the world is a dangerous place, to pick up a copy of the book, Sway. (It is even available in audio book form at Audible.com for those of us whose reading has to take place while driving or washing the dishes.) I promise that it will be (as it almost always is) a humbling experience to have what you think of as a sensible reaction (aka “better safe than sorry”) picked apart and shown back to you as hard-wired psychological knee-jerk silliness, but it is a punch worth taking.

Reading the book will help you understand why, even though driving is one of the most dangerous activities you can engage in, you feel that it is safer for your child than letting him walk to school. The reason? You don’t perceive driving to be a dangerous activity. Whereas, you do perceive walking to school to be a dangerous activity (child abduction).

Take this quiz to gauge your reaction to each of these statistics. Be sensitive and truly notice which of these raises your heart-rate more?

• Auto Fatalities: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the 41,059 traffic fatalities annually in the U.S. 1,670 (4%) of them are children age 14 and younger. (1)

• Child Abductions By Strangers Fatalities: According to the National Non-Family Abduction Report October 2002 (recent study performed by the U.S. Department of Justice) there are 115 non-family-member fatal kidnappings per year. (2)

You’ve just read the facts, but be truthful, which of these activities, driving to school or walking to school, still feels more threatening?

Allow me to rephrase. A child is 15 TIMES more likely to be in a fatal traffic accident while you are driving than be abducted and killed by a stranger.

I ask you again, which of these activities are you more likely to allow your child do today, ride in a car or walk to school?

Are you still certain that your perspective regarding your child’s safety is rational?

Semi-related Postscript:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a campaign called “Safe Routes To School” in which they acknowledge the relative safety of walking to school versus driving to school. The program includes educational components for families and schools advocating for changes that get children out of cars and onto their feet and bicycles. Read and download it here.

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1. Traffic Safety Facts 2007: Children

2. NISMART National Non-Family Abduction Report October 2002

In our media-lead world where fear is pushed as a means to sell more product, there is a movement brewing. Moms, who by definition have the best intuitive sense of any creature on the planet, are standing up and saying, “We won’t be played like that!” These moms are examining the current parenting culture that brings us baby knee pads, professional baby-proofers, and child-tracking devices, and they are saying, “We won’t buy it.” Those moms are going underground…

They are saying a lot of other things too, in the titles of their books… “Homework Is Hurting Our Children & What We Can Do About It”, and “We Should All Stop Worrying & Start Living”, and “Ignorning The Experts May Be Best For Your Child”

They are saying it in the titles of their blogs.. “Giving our kids the freedom we had without going nuts with worry”, and “There is no “right way” to rear a child”, and “Lose the Guilt, Love Your Instincts”.

It is an underground movement of common sense that is raising the volume of the voice of reason. That movement now also has a homepage UndergroundMoms.com No, it isn’t another social networking site (one more of those and the internet might explode), it is simply a referral source of great reading for smart moms who share a common value, freeing themselves from baseless restrictions and “raising the volume of the voice of reason” If you are already reading this blog, you are probably an Underground Mom too. You will enjoy the reading referrals you will find there. Free the people! (At least free the moms.)

www.UndergroundMoms.com