I'm on the fence about weight loss camps for kids. Sure they teach healthy habits, but what about the potential for emotional stigma? Are the benefits worth the risk? It probably depends on the child, the family, and the camp and how the situation is handled. What a good weight loss camp can do, I imagine, is take a child out of an environment filled with unhealthy habits and give them time to learn new, healthier ways of living.

What a handful of camps are doing right, then, are inviting family members along for the ride. Though the camper is the one who spends the majority of the time at camp, parents and siblings are invited along for a long weekend near the end of the summer. There, they too learn the joys of exercise and techniques for feeding their lighter and healthier camper.

It makes sense. Kids have a low tolerance for hypocrites, especially when it's their parents who don't practice what they preach. Since research shows that teens and dieting don't mix, encouraging entire families to be more active and focus on healthy foods seems like a recipe for success.

When it comes to weight loss camps for kids, what's your opinion?

Source

Summer is quickly drawing to a close, so why not take advantage of these last days before the school year starts and spend some fun, active time with your kids?

My son has been going to a great day camp this summer. He loves it, he gets tons of physical activity, and he's always filled with stories about the fun things he did. It's a great program. But, in some ways, the schedule keeps it from really feeling like summer at our house. So last week my son stayed home from camp. I still had to work, but I made sure we did at least one special, fun thing a day. We walked to the park and went fishing, visited the BMX track, stopped at the skate park, used a rock climbing wall, and went to the community center's pool. Even though we're nearing the end of the season, last week felt more like "summer" to me than any of the weeks before. I really enjoyed the special times with my son ... and I think he had a great time, too.

Summer fun doesn't necessarily mean time-consuming, expensive outings either. Check out the gallery to see some fun ideas of easy, low-cost activities to do with your kids. For more kid-oriented, summer fitness opportunities, check out this great article by Ace Fitness.

Source

I absolutely love this kind of stuff and found this article from Time magazine really interesting. Have you ever thought about how the birth order of you and your siblings, or your children, has had an effect on everything from intelligence to career success? It's obviously something we have no control over, and somebody has to be first, middle, and last -- but just what does that mean?

Of course this kind of research and the generalized statistics they come up with are hardly across-the-board situations that apply to everybody, but I personally do believe that when you look across a society like ours as a whole you can definitely come up with "more often than not" type generalizations. And it's a little scary to look at some of what they say and see how it fits into each of our families. What patterns does your family follow? Are you typical of your birth order position, or are you the exception to the rule?

Source

Sesame Workshop, which produces the youth-oriented 'Sesame Street' television program for the PBS network, said that it will begin selling a DVD soon that is geared towards kids living in military families.

The DVD will have a touch more emotional compassion along with more emotional lessons instead of academic letters and numbers, according to production officials. Insured vets are the target market here, as they return and explain war to their kids.

This comes on the heels of a similar DVD released last year under the Sesame Street label that was geared specifically to open up family discussions about military deployments. With more than a million U.S. kids having parents in the military, these DVDs sound like excellent tools that can easily be relatable to those impressionable kids.

Source

Are you shorter than your older brother? Chances are it's his fault you're not as tall.

That's according to new research from the University College London, that found younger siblings were generally shorter than their older brothers and sisters.

There's a few different theories as to why this may be the case. One is that, in larger families, resources may be limited, so when you finally arrived there was only so much time, money or love to go around. The other, is that you were adversely affected as a fetus -- as women who have multiple pregnancies are likely to put on weight, which subsequently makes their blood sugar levels poorer and hampers their pregnancy.

But before you start making angry phone calls to your older siblings, blaming them for all your problems, remember that there are plenty of benefits to being in a larger family -- it just turns out that height isn't one of them.

Source