Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

On Wednesday, as President Barack Obama revealed his plans to prevent gun violence in the United States, the White House released a handful of handwritten letters from children, asking the President about gun control.



"It's a free country, but I recommend there needs be a limit with guns," wrote 8-year-old Grant Fritz, who lives in Maryland. "P.S. I know you're doing your best," he added.

"I am writing you to ask you to STOP gun violence," read a letter from 10-year-old Taejah Goode, who lives in Georgia. "I am very sad about the children who lost their lives."

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There are no words to explain how sad I am about the school shooting," wrote 11-year-old Julia, a resident of Washington, D.C. "Even though I'm not scared for my safety, I'm scared for others… I may not [be] that into politics, but my opinion is that it should be very hard for people to buy guns."

"I know that laws have to be passed by Congress but I beg you to try very hard to make guns not allowed. Not just for me, but for Read More »from Kids Write Letters to President Obama, Asking for Gun Control

Do kids really need so much praise? (Photo: Getty Images)A new book on finding one's true self has rekindled an age-old discussion with a chapter saying that praise is harmful to kids. But parenting experts tell Yahoo! Shine that praise itself isn't the problem -- the issue is that parents have doing it wrong for years.

Related: Forget Tiger Mothers. Teach People How To Be Good Parents Instead

In "The Examined Life," Stephen Grosz pulls together insights gleaned from 25 years worth of work as a psychoanalyst. He became a father at age 50, and his experiences helping troubled, unhappy adults led him to agree with an old idea -- that empty praise does children more harm than good.

Do Confident Kids Have More Future Career Success?

"Admiring our children may temporarily lift our sense of self-esteem but it isn't doing much for a child's sense of self," he told the British newspaper The Sunday Times. "Empty praise is as bad as thoughtless criticism -- it expresses indifference to the child's feelings and thoughts."

But parenting experts agree

Read More »from Author Says Praise is Bad for Kids. Parenting Experts Say He's Wrong

She used to avoid the spotlight, but with her new high-profile role in President Obama's 2nd inauguration, Chelsea Clinton seems ready to be back in the public eye. (Photo: Donna Ward/Getty Images) Chelsea Clinton is returning to Washington—this time in a leadership role. The former first daughter has been named the Honorary Chair of the 2013 National Day of Service and will headline a summit on the National Mall on Saturday to launch President Barack Obama's second inauguration.

Related: Photos of Chelsea Clinton's New Public Life

"There is no more fitting way to mark a presidential inauguration than a day of service," Clinton said in a statement sent to Yahoo! Shine. "Coming together as a country to strengthen our communities has always been part of the American spirit. I am deeply grateful that President Obama and his administration have put service at the center of the Inauguration weekend and I am proud to be part of a nation-wide service effort, honoring the service and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and building a brighter future for all of us."

Related: 5 Fun Ways to Volunteer

The high-profile role is a good fit for Clinton, who retreated from view after

Read More »from Chelsea Clinton Gets High-profile Inaugural Role

The Crawley sisters, just before Edith's wedding. The early 20th century was not known for being fabulous for women. We couldn't vote, we didn't have many rights, and in England, where "Downton Abbey" is set, we couldn't even own property (though we were considered to be property ourselves). And still, Sunday's episode (you can read our recap here) had several great "girl-power" moments.

1. The Dowager Countess telling Edith to walk away. As Sir Antony Stallan stammered "I can't" at the altar and the local pastor seemed about to go on with the wedding, the matriarch of the family -- the one most-bound by tradition -- got up and told her Edith to walk away from the man who didn't want to marry her. "It's over, my dear. Don't drag it out," she murmured to the crushed bride. "Wish him well and let him go." It was a powerful moment, when a woman whose entire life was defined by her marriage urged her granddaughter not to be ruined by hers.

2. Lady Cora comforting Edith. Instead of feeding her distraught daughter some insipid line about

Read More »from Downton Abbey: 5 Scenes that Were Good for Women (even Though Edith Got Dumped)

That dress! It's more beautiful than Mary's! Edith will have to pay for that somehow... When we last saw Lady Edith Crawley, at the end of the premiere of Season 3, she was happily planning to marry her much-older suitor, Sir Antony Strallan, in spite of the the massive age difference and his old war injury. Sunday's episode opened with her looking radiantly happy, possibly for the first time in her life, as her family and the staff got Downton Abbey ready for her wedding, just a month after her sister Mary's. But then? OMG. Here are 10 things we loved about the last episode.

Related: The Real Downton Abbey? Highclere Castle

1. Edith's wedding dress. Costume designer Caroline McColl says that the real inspiration for Edith's Grecian-style satin wedding gown was an original silk train that she borrowed from a friend. "We brought through the embroider from the train and put it on the shoulder and the hips,"she told Entertainment Weekly. "It was like a draped silk dress. It's very simple and elegant." (That gorgeous tiara was the same one that Mary wore in her wedding in

Read More »from 10 Things We Loved About Downton Abbey This Week: Poor Edith!

Is fast food giving your kids asthma? (Photo: Thinkstock)We've all heard plenty of warnings about the dangers of fast food and how it's at least partly to blame for our childhood obesity epidemic. But a new international study shows that kids who eat fast food three or more times per week are at risk for more than just a little extra weight: Those chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers have now been linked to higher rates of asthma and eczema in kids.

Related: The Five Worst "Healthy" Fast Food Meals for Kids

The study, published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, used data from more than 319,000 13- and 14-year-olds in 51 countries, along with 181,000 6- to 7-year-olds from 31 countries. All of the participants were also involved in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, a collaborative research project made up of nearly 2 million children from 100 countries.

WATCH: Human Guinea Pigs Paid Thousands to Eat Fast Food Every Day

The participants' parents were asked about whether their kids experienced wheezing, rough or

Read More »from Fast Food Linked to Asthma, Eczema in Kids

Beyonce at the BET Awards, July 2012. (Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty Images For BET)Now that the hoopla over her underboob photo shoot has died down a tiny bit, GQ reveals a few fascinating quirks about Beyonce.

Related: Designer Says Beyonce is the Only Star to Dry Clean Borrowed Clothes, Write Thank You Notes

1. She has an archive of everything she's ever done. And we mean everything -- publicity photos from the Destiny's Child era, raw interview footage, recordings of all of her concerts, even personal diary entries recorded on her laptop -- all kept in a temperature-controlled digital-storage facility down the hall from her office. And if you're talking to her, you're agreeing to have that conversation recorded for posterity as well.

Related: Beyonce's 10 Best Looks

2. She's her own stalker. Her personal library -- which she rightly calls her "crazy archive" -- holds much more than music videos and paparazzi snapshots. "Beyoncé's inner sanctum also contains thousands of hours of private footage, compiled by a 'visual director' Beyoncé employs who has shot

Read More »from 5 Bizarre Things GQ Found Out About Beyonce

Earlier this week on Twitter, fake-kid Honest Toddler mused about how the Berenstain Bears managed to get so big.

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As Honest Toddler's followers retweeted the ideas, the Berenstain Bears took a break from tweeting things like "Yay! :D" and "Bear-y good! :D" to defend themselves:

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Who knew they had internet access in that tree?

Honest Toddler replied as only an honest -- and possibly sociopathic -- kid could: By throwing a friend under the bus.
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And then things really started heating up.

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We know that plenty of people love that kindhearted bear family, but there was always something about them that made us a tiny bit uneasy. Who names their firstborn son "Brother?" Why is the girl "Sister" but the youngest cub "Honey" instead of "Baby"? Who hollowed out that enormous tree? And where do they get all of their stuff?

Honest Toddler has an idea:

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Read More »from An Honest Toddler Takes on the Berenstain Bears