babies in the news...

I'm encouraged to see baby health and wholeness issues occasionally featured in the news. Things like...Pediatricians say our children need to be outdoors more. That rolling in the grass, communing with nature are somehow essential to their entire well-being. Imagine that! Maybe nature's green is better that a picture of grass on the computer? Maybe the Baby Channel -- offering programming for 6-month-year-olds and up -- might just be unnecessary - hmm... or even possibly even harmful? That's something we may know, deep down, but I love seeing it featured center-stage.

Then we have some really scary stuff: Container Syndrome -- you know, where you put the baby in a multi-purpose carrier that you rarely have to take them out of. Carry it to the car and it becomes a car seat. Carry it into the house and they can stay in it and play...and watch you from it while you eat dinner...and even sleep in it. Truly, this invention springs from wanting 'the best' for your baby -- offering a seamless existence and minimizing bumps. But the result of overuse of container is not only stunted development (yup - it turns out they really need to squirm and fuss and roll on the floor -- or the grass! -- and try to hold their head up and gain strength from their struggles to crawl), but also grossly misshapen heads that can only be fixed by wearing another container - a helmet. All in all, don't they mostly need the messiness of real interaction? The warmth of human contact? (...maybe even the kind you see in 'underdeveloped countries, where mothers wrap their children in wondrously swathy fabric and tie them to their bodies and then go about their day? Yeah...I know it's possibly harder and perhaps more uncomfortable than we think. But it's both a real and romantic notion that I've always admired. Maybe it would have been worth living in a third world country.)

Then we have a downright evil: Phthalates* -- in the news right now because, in testing the urine of babies who have been recently bathed and shampooed in products like...well, Johnson's baby shampoo, they find a disturbingly high level of phthalates therein. As if our chemically burdened bodies aren't already harming them enough in utero. Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on our 21st century selves. Even Eskimos and other humans who live in pristine conditions on the 'untouched' poles of our world carry almost the same chemical load as the rest of us. But babies are actually touched by this load before they can even be conceived. Vogue magazine's article An Inconceivable Truth is a powerfully informative article on environmentally instigated infertility - and phthaltes take their rightfully damned place on this list.

But coming back full circle to creative play: NPR recently had a wonderful segment on 'play' (Hear or read it here). It seems there's a frightening lack of creativity in our children's play. And they trace it back to...TV? Yes, but in a more particular and surprising way than our corporate lives of just being blobs in front of the TV. Actually, blame is squarely on the shoulders of 1950's The Mickey Mouse Club. Really. Well, actually, the commercials. Toymaker Mattel seized a golden opportunity to advertise toys year-round... ones that prescribe and control the direction of play activity by their very nature. It turns out 'wasting time ' in 'mindless play' is not only NOT a waste of time -- it's essential.

Now that we're all depressed, let's play:



*There's lots of 'PR' from the phthalates industry online (reminds me of the initial not-so-comforting defense of mercury dental fillings. 'Sure mercury is harmful to humans. But your saliva covers the tooth and you really don't absorb any of it'. Yeah... Methinks they're worried about liability...) NotTooPretty.org has a wealth of information on phthalates and other poisons found in cosmetics.