parenting

Tips for reliving your childhood

I recently removed the play structure I'd built 16 years ago in our backyard. I remember wondering as I built it, "What will it feel like when I tear it down?" Well, it was kind of sad. Memories washed over me as I worked. Time perception isn't linear.

I also tore down the tree house I'd built for my kids. Not only have they outgrown it, but it also wasn't in our tree. Our neighbors had graciously given us permission to use their tree because we didn't have one of our own. Luckily, Seattle's building department has standing orders to ignore kid's tree houses.

Umbra on chlorine

Dear Umbra, So I’ve been buying unbleached diapers for my baby, using chlorine-free laundry and dish soaps and non-chlorine bleached paper, and generally thinking that’s better for me and the environment. Then I go swimming in a chlorinated pool twice a week, sometimes with my kids! Is there a difference in the type of chlorine […]

What parents can do

Ever since I wrote a piece on Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady” bent on returning real food to school cafeterias, I’ve been meaning to follow up on what parents can do to improve their kids’ cafeteria experience. Well, like the good lunch lady she is, Chef Ann is always sharing recipes for action. Yesterday, […]

Watch out for scary chemicals in plastic toys for tots

Umbra offered up a number of clever gift ideas for kids in her latest column, focusing particularly on experiences rather than things. But if you still want to do some thing-giving for those wee ones, you might first want to check out "What's Toxic In Toyland," an article by Margot Roosevelt in Time.

Fed up with breast-milk contamination, mothers form a national activist group

Mary Brune looked worried. “I don’t know what the problem is,” she said, peering at the generator in the grass. Attached to it was a blower that was, in turn, attached to a puddle of yellow nylon. The next morning, that puddle was supposed to inflate to become a giant rubber ducky, the centerpiece of […]

Children, anxiety, and global warming

I found this post over on the Climate Ark blog.

Hello,

My 8-year-old daughter has just come running to me in a flood of tears. Why? Because she thinks the world is going to end sometime soon and it's the fault of me and, to a lesser extent, my generation. That's why. Why does she think that? Because she takes it for gospel that over bearing boffins like yourself know more than ordinary folk like me. Does it make you feel good? Making an eight-year-old girl with a mouth brace bawl her little eyes out?

I really empathized with this father. There's more:

Beware, ye Halloween pirates and princesses.

We just received a timely pre-Halloween press release from the Sierra Club, warning about the dangers of toy jewelry. Not the choking hazard, or the dressing-like-Mr.-T-for-the-fourth-year-in-a-row hazard, but the leaching-toxic-metals hazard.

Toy jewelry, apparently, can have high amounts of lead. It also, according to the Sierra Club, has become a popular trick-or-treat item in recent years. (Thanks, but I'll take the candy. Unless you have a locally grown, organic apple sans razor blade?)

Lead is bad for you, particularly if you are a trick-or-treating-age tot -- even more particularly if you are a trick-or-treating-age tot with a propensity for putting anything and everything into your mouth.

Umbra on synthetic fabrics and kids

Dear Umbra, I have just recently learned about all these plastic-awareness issues and now wonder about polyester clothing, or any human-made fabric for that matter, on my children (three girls: 3, 5, and 7 years old). If plastics can leach out into their bodies, can clothing also affect them? Julie Roberts Nevada City, Calif. Dearest […]

Nature and allergies

Want to make sure your kids don't have bad allergies? Take them out into messy, dirty nature.