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Cutting Grocery Costs without Cutting Nutrition

Simple, healthy, and affordable ways to weather the rising price of food

Karen Collins, R.D., American Institute of Cancer Research

Grocery prices are projected to increase again in 2008 – that’s following 2007’s highest annual increase in 17 years. But surviving these tough economic times doesn’t have to mean sacrificing good nutrition. Some simple strategies can help you cut food costs and eat more healthfully, too.

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Madlynn is Kid of the Month


8 Ways to Connect with Your Teenager

By Sandra Magsamen

...Hug, sing, dance and tell your child you love them. Even if your teen acts as if they can't stand it, she promises you it's something they love and need. Use these other suggestions as ways to connect with your teenager...

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

by Jeff Kinney


It’s summer vacation, the weather’s great, and all the kids are having fun outside. So where’s Greg Heffley? Inside his house, playing video games with the shades drawn...

Make the most of your weekend

by Charlotte Latvala

Too much free time can be just as nerve-racking as an overload of scheduled events
If you run errands over the weekend, make them enjoyable with silly games



Put your children to sleep at their weekday bedtime
Have a sitter take the kids while you enjoy an afternoon alone in your own home

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It’s playtime! The best of big outdoor toys

Get active! These fun toys will appeal to both parents and kids this summer

by Stephanie Oppenheim - TODAYShow.com contributor

What was your family’s favorite summertime game? For my less-than-athletic family, it was badminton. While we probably weren’t very good at it, I can still hear the laughter and it remains one of those happy “every summer” childhood memories.

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Consumer: parenting news
 

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Single Moms - find here resources on financial aid, scholarships, help with basic needs, food, prescription drugs, health care, housing, legal info, and much more...

 

Car Seat - 'How To’ Knowledge Retained by Parents

 

by Amanda Bach

New Study Shows Car Seat Clinics Are Effective, according to Safet Kids Worldwide.

 

Car seat installation clinics are successful in helping parents and caregivers properly restrain children in back seats, but more effort needs to be made to reach underserved communities, according to newly released research by Safe Kids Worldwide.

 

Based on data from car seat checkup events conducted in 29 states in February 2005, Safe Kids found that parents successfully changed their behavior and retained their child passenger safety knowledge six weeks after receiving hands-on instruction. At a second child safety seat checkup, 45% more seats were properly installed by the parents than at the first instructional event.

 

Correctly used child safety seats decrease the risk of death by 71% for infants and 54% for toddlers. Injury risks for children using belt-positioning booster seats are reduced by 59%. Typically, more than 70% of child safety seats are improperly installed.

 

The Safe Kids study also showed that the checkups disproportionately reached highly educated parents or white parents as opposed to less educated or ethnically diverse families.

 

“We need to do more to reach the communities that need our help the most,” said Lorrie Walker, training and technical manager for Safe Kids Worldwide. “Safe Kids’ network of more than 600 coalitions and chapters in the United States has the flexibility and skills to meet the needs of each community we serve.”

 

General Motors Corp., the lead financial supporter for the Safe Kids Buckle Up program, and Safe Kids are working to install more permanent inspection stations in economically disadvantaged areas. This expansion is in addition to the 119 Mobile Car Seat Check Up Vans that were designed to help Safe Kids coalitions bring events to neighborhoods that do not have access to Buckle Up’s nationally certified child passenger safety technicians.

 

“Safe Kids has tools in place to help educate families of all backgrounds,” said Bob Lange, GM’s executive director of Structure and Safety Integration. “We need to keep working to reach high-risk groups of parents with communication and training to keep their children properly restrained every time on every trip.”

 

Families with older children were also significantly underrepresented in the research. Children who attended checkup events tended to be young—ages 4 and under — even though Safe Kids Worldwide recommends that kids who have outgrown car seats ride on booster seats until they are about 4 feet, 9 inches tall and 80 to 100 pounds. Most children reach this height and weight between the ages of 8 and 12.

 

“In the event of a crash, a belt-positioning booster seat and safety belt provide better protection for most tweens than the adult safety belt alone,” Walker said. “Children in this age group are among the least likely to be in the correct restraint. We need to make booster seat use among tweens who need them just as automatic as it is for small children to ride in car seats.” The events proved successful in teaching parents to only use child safety seats that meet federal safety standards, have not been involved in a crash and have not expired. These guidelines reduced the number of inappropriate seats used at the second event, weeding out many secondhand seats that do not have a known history or seats that are more than six years old.

 

Safe Kids coalitions will hold more than 200 educational events, most at many dealerships nationwide.

 

Sources:

Contact Mike Livingston at phone: 202-662-4478 or email: mlivingston@safekids.org.

Safe Kids USA

1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Suite 1000

Washington, DC 20004

Tel: (202) 662-0600

Fax: (202) 393-2072

 

Safe Kids Buckle Up is a national program developed by Safe Kids Worldwide and sponsored by General Motors and Chevrolet to educate parents and caregivers about the importance of properly restraining children on every ride.

 

The 10-year-old program has inspected more than 830,000 car seats; held approximately 40,000 car seat checkup events around the country; donated approximately 365,000 car seats to families in need; educated more than 15 million parents and caregivers; and launched 119 Mobile Car Seat Check Up Vans — Chevy Express and Chevy Venture vans stocked with supplies and equipment to hold car seat inspections — with another six joining the fleet in 2007.

 

Contributor:

Amanda Bach was raised by a single mom and so she learned it first hand how difficult it was to watch her mom struggled everyday life. And that is the main reason she co-founded SingleMom.com™ to create this wonderful Website/organization. Her energy, natural creative ability and superior business intuition make her contributions to this website immeasurable. Her hobbies include volunteer, Internet, reading, ballet, traveling, snowboarding, and especially wine & food.

 

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Top 8 Tips for Reducing Kids Screen Time This Summer

Reducing time spent in front of televisions and computers is one of the easiest ways to improve your family's health. Here are eight simple ways to limit screen time so you can help crank up your kids’ energy, re-charge their minds, and improve their health.

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What would you change?

Weekly Column, by Annette Bridges

Change -- some people dread it, and others can’t get enough. It may be much like the idiom, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” When it comes to what we would alter or why we would make a modification, the answers vary because we all have different things we value, want, need and consider important.

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Being a Role Model

by Laurie Cesario-Overton

If I had to choose one sentence that would best describe what I feel parents need to learn, it would be this: Be your child's BEST ROLE MODEL in all the ways that truly count. Be your child's HERO. Whatever you do, do it for all the right reasons.

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How to Find the Best Car Loans for Single Moms

Financial Advice for Single Moms

The best car loans for single mothers might be just around the corner at your local car lot.

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3 Money Rules for Stay-at-Home Moms

As we all know, life is unpredictable. We lose jobs, get divorced and even become widowed...
Here are three steps stay-at-home parents should take to better manage their own and the family’s finances.

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You May Have Too Much Debt But You Also Have Options

How Life Works

If you feel like you're in over your head with personal debt, you're not alone. Millions of Americans have become overextended, many as a result of easy credit and the recessions. Credit cards, medical bills, personal loans and raising interest rates do not make a good financial mix.

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Could fat babies mean fat toddlers?

A new study from Harvard Medical School found that babies who gained weight quickly had a sharply higher risk of obesity. The study followed close to 600 babies and found those in the top quarter of weight for their length at 6 months had a 40 percent higher risk of obesity by age 3 than smaller babies.

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Crystal Bowersox - A Single Mom And A Real American Idol

Read how the amazing Crystal Bowersox. the runner-up of American Idol Season 9, handles fame and life as a single mom, raising her 17 month old son.

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5 Ways for Single Moms to Save Money

Single moms are always looking for ways to save money, and for good reason... It’s important to find ways to cut corners on the little things that perhaps you don’t think about too often, because those are usually where your biggest money drains are.

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Suze Orman's Recession Rescue Plan - helps you survive in times of financial crisis

OPRAH.com

Do you know what your family would do if you lost your job - or worse, your home? Financial expert Suze Orman is ready to help you devise a recession rescue plan to survive - and possibly thrive - during this deepening financial crisis...

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Your Just-in-Case Emergency Plan

by RealSimple

Who do you call if you can't make it home in time to meet the kids' bus? Who do you trust to take in your mail when you're on vacation? Who do you trust with the extra set of keys to your house?

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How to save $10,000

By Liz Pulliam Weston

If you were hoping for a list of small tweaks you could make in your spending to save $10,000 a year, sorry. The reality is that $10,000 is a lot of money. And saving big money usually means making big changes in the areas where we spend the most, such as: Housing, Transportation, Food.

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The Super, Sexy, Single Mom on a Budget

by Renee Rayles

A quick reference guide designed for the busy, single mom who has

little time to read while running the mom taxi, cooking dinner, helping with homework, and trying to fit in a date night every now and then.

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Single Mothers &
Male Role-Models / Mentors

Single mothers carry an enormous load of responsibility, especially those having sole and/or primary custody of minor children. They nourish, they nurture, they teach, they discipline, they shelter, they protect, and they provide… all without the assistance of another equally-invested adult.

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Mom's Obesity Raises Newborn's Heart Risk

from the National Institute of Health

The more obese a woman is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the likelihood that her newborn baby will have a congenital heart defect, a new study suggests. The finding raises concerns because 1 in 5 women are obese at the start of pregnancy in the United States.

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The 10-Ingredient Shopping Trip

By Tara Parker-Pope and Mark Bittman

... In his latest “How to Cook Everything” segment on the Today Show, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman makes it surprisingly easy to cook a week’s worth of dinners with just a 10-ingredient shopping trip.

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Your 5-minute guide to protecting your identity

20 steps to protect yourself from identity theft, and seven ways to clean up things if you become a victim.

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TheOnlineMom.com offers parents and consumers a guide to the top-rated, age-appropriate, kid-tested and parent-approved tech toys and gifts.

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Single Moms in the News

6 Best Celebrity Single Moms
Read about Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, Michelle Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Kimora Lee Simmons, Mary-Louise Parker... read more

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw

by Jeff Kinney

For those wondering why tween boys don’t read very much, the answer is that more books aren’t like this...

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What they play: Kids and video games

Parents, are you left in the dark? Arm yourself with these three tips

by John Davison, WhatTheyPlay.com

Call it a generation gap or a digital divide, if you're a parent who is a little clueless about what video games are appropriate for your child, you are not alone. John Davison, one of the founders of What They Play, offers tips that help take the mystery out of the video games your children are playing.

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How to answer six of kids' toughest questions

When kids stump you with one of these six questions, you can rely on these answers.

Questions, such as: Why didn't I get invited to that party? Where do people go when they die? How do thunder and lightning work? Where do rainbows come from? Why do we have to move?...

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Is it harder to raise boys or girls?

by Paula Spencer

Boys may not listen as well as girls because their hearing isn't as good from birth
Girls are rigged to be people-oriented, while boys are more action-oriented
Girls tend to grow up less confident and more insecure than boys
Boys are harder to raise early on, but girls become more difficult as preteens

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My Story as a Single Mom

by Gail Showalter

Author Gail Showalter is looking for stories from single mothers to use as examples in a book that will reveal how personalities affect the different ways we handle difficulties. This submission should tell of a situation that you found yourself in as a single mother. It should tell what you did and relate that to your own personality and temperament. In other words, why you did what you did when another person of a different temperament probably would have done it entirely differently given the same circumstances. To find out more about the submission, CLICK HERE.

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