Parenting Tips and Advice – ParentWonder.com

Fisher-Price to Recall Nearly 1M Toys

August 1, 2007 By PW Editorial Team

Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys — including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters — because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.

The recall being announced Thursday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August. It is the latest in a wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.

The recall is the first for Fisher-Price Inc. and parent company Mattel Inc. involving lead paint. It is the largest for Mattel since 1998 when Fisher-Price had to yank about 10 million Power Wheels from toy stores.

Full report: SFGate.com

30 Ways to Go Green with Your Family

August 1, 2007 By PW Editorial Team

Check out my guest post on Tiffany’s fantastic blog, Nature Moms:

30 Ways to Go Green with Your Family

You’ll find some simple ideas that you and your family can use to create a greener family.

Note: It’s only after reading Tiffany’s blog that I now seriously consider putting natural living in my family as much as possible.

[Read more…]

Nursing firstborn: A true breastfeeding story

August 1, 2007 By Abel Cheng

I always find stories about mothers overcoming obstacles in breastfeeding fascinating and heartwarming. Because it takes courage, focus, and commitment to do it. And also a strong will to weather all sorts of comments from naysayers.

Li Za is one of the examples. Her story might not be perfect for breastfeeding advocates but hey life is not perfect.

As long as you do your very best to breastfeed your baby no matter what happens, this is already a success story in itself, at least to me.

It doesn’t really matter whether Li Za wrote this story during World Breastfeeding Week or not. What’s more important is how she overcame challenges of all kinds in breastfeeding her firstborn.

Among the problems she faced:

Total exhaustion after delivery
Producing not enough milk
Guilt of not giving breast milk but formula
How she turned from 60% formula to fully breast milk
No nursing room when she started work

If you are at the brink of giving up breastfeeding without valid medical reasons, go read the story and be inspired. I hope this story makes you feel better because you’re not alone in facing these problems.

10 ways to entertain young children for $1 or less (without the TV)

July 31, 2007 By Abel Cheng

What struck me first was the title.

First $1 or less.

Second without the TV.

Move over Tickle Me Elmo or Lego building blocks or computer games. It’s grateful to realize that you can still do something with young children without burning a hole in your pocket and TV.

Some of them are classic games that I used to play before, of course, when I was younger. They are still fun even at my age now.

Check out Brad Isaac’s list:

10 ways to entertain young children for $1 or less (without the TV)

Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks – An Interview

July 30, 2007 By PW Editorial Team

It’s our pleasure to feature Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks, a highly popular blog for parents looking for smart parenting tips, in this exclusive interview. She touched on how she started ParentHacks.com, her biggest parenting challenge, and her advice to new parents.

If you haven’t already visited her website, do it, not now, but after reading this interview. Many tips found there are submitted by parents like you.

1) Where did you get the idea for the ever popular Parent Hacks? What’s your biggest hurdle you faced in creating this site and how did you promote it?

The idea had two sources of inspiration. First, my husband, Rael, was one of the series editors for the O’Reilly Hacks series of books, so the notion of quick, unconventional solutions to problems had been spinning around our house for quite some time. Second, it occurred to me that the best advice I’d ever gotten wasn’t found in books, but shared with other parents. Boom! Parent Hacks was born. It’s the site I wish I could have read when my first child was born.

Biggest hurdle: none, really, unless you count sleep deprivation. I’m also one of the lucky few whose site got picked up early on by a few prominent bloggers, and just took off from there. I’ve done very little promotion.

2) What are the top three hacks you like the most on Parent Hacks?

Impossible to choose! I can point you to readers’ choices for the top ten Parent Hacks of last year though: Top 10 Parent Hacks of 2006

3) You’re a mother of two kids. What’s your biggest parenting challenge so far and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge has been to learn to trust myself. My tendency is to run around searching for answers, because someone must feel less clueless than I. Turns out that being “right” as a parent is less important than doing your best with love and humility. I’ve learned to overcome it with time and practice.

4) If there’s only one thing, what would be the best gift you can give to your children?

Unconditional acceptance and love.

5) Every parent wants a happy, confident and successful kid. What’s the best way to achieve this?

My kids are 7 and 4, so I’m not really qualified to answer that question (is anyone, really?). Besides, the answer is different for every kid. But my plan and hope is to give my kids enough encouragement to let them know I believe in them, and enough challenge for them to learn to believe in themselves.

6) What’s your advice for new parents?

Forget perfection, remember to get babysitters so you can go on dates (even if that means an hour at Starbucks between nursing sessions), and know that it will all be okay.