Blog Posts by Parenting.com

© Tara O'BradyBy: Taylor Newman

A few months ago, brown rice syrup - and organic infant formulas containing the sweetener - came under media fire for containing small amounts of arsenic. While the headlines caught my eye (I sometimes use brown rice syrup in baking as a more nutritious, balancing alternative to sugar), I assumed this particular media storm was, as most tend to be, much ado about nothing; the media loves to take pot-shots at organic food, but the headlines and upheaval behind them are frequently one-sided, or straight-up incomplete. My suspicions were confirmed - or so I thought - a few weeks later when I skimmed a follow-up story that said the arsenic in question was not the kind that's harmful; it was a non-issue born of over-simplification and a whole lot of mommy-scaring hype.

Plus: Is Organic Food Overrated?

As much as I'd deliberately kept a cool head about the whole thing, I did breathe a small sigh of relief. The 'safe type' of arsenic distinction reassured me; I know

New Sew CostumesEasy do-it-yourself, no-sew costumes for kids of all ages!

More Halloween fun from Parenting.com:

Fun Halloween Trivia

5 Halloween Safety Tips

Cute Halloween Costumes for Pets

Even More DIY Kids Costumes!

Snoop Dogg Smokes Weed with His Son

By Brian Braiker
The internet is, ahem, alight today because Snoop Dogg's son tweeted a few pictures of himself smoking weed with his famous dad.

Corde Calvin Broadus is 18, aspires to be a rapper like is dad, and, also like his dad, is apparently quite the marijuana aficionado.

One photo young Broadus tweeted shows him lighting his dad's bong. Another shows the two of them rolling joints side by side.

So, the family that tokes together, uh, jokes together? Maybe. Not everyone was amused, though. Celebrity Baby Scoop clucked its tongue, calling the pictures "controversial," and HollywoodLife went so far as to call Snoop a "bad father."

Plus: Parents Plant Drugs in PTA President's Car

Still. It's hard, as the blog Crushable points out, to get too worked up over this.

After all Snoop, who recently converted to Rastafarianism and changed his name to Snoop Lion, first gained notoriety by spitting heavy-lidded rhymes on an album called the Chronic. Are we that

From "Parenthood" to "Guys With Kids," the fall season holds a mirror up to the American family's new normal
By: Joshua Alston

The American family is constantly changing.

If this comes as alarming news, you probably haven't been watching much TV lately. The latest television gold rush has been the quest to find the next show that will tap into the parenting zeitgeist. When ABC's "Modern Family" debuted in 2009, it was heralded as the savior of the family sitcom - by that point sitcoms had been overrun by competing visions of what it's like to be in your 20s, starved for a date and hating your job. So when "Family" became a massive hit, the message Hollywood took away from it was that there was an audience starved for nuanced depictions of contemporary family life in all its messy, frustrating shades.

Plus: Our Favorite Fictional Fathers

Hollywood's motto has always been "If it makes money, make more," so after "Family" became one of television's most highly-watched and

© Matt Villano

By: Matt Villano
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Welcome to the scheduling conflict for the ages!

In this corner, having just resumed for the year, the regular activity where your little ones learn important stuff such as grammar, algebra and social skills-School! And in this corner, available whenever you can afford it, the sporadic activity that introduces your kids to exciting new people and places and things-Family travel!

Plus: The Greatest Family Travel Movies Ever

One of these activities must reign supreme on your list of priorities. The $10-million question: Which one?

To aid your decision-making process, consider how others have acted in the past. In March, a TripAdvisor.com poll showed 78 percent of 1,709 respondents with kids have let them miss school for a family vacation. Many of these people cited cost as a key factor in their decisions-after all, it's cheaper-sometimes dramatically so-to book flights and hotel rooms when demand is low (i.e., when

By Filip at Parenting.com

Many kids have to deal with difficult bus commutes to and from school, but one toddler's ordeal might just take the cake. 3-year-old Levi Vidal, an autistic pre-schooler from Brooklyn, has been made to endure repeated trials that would be difficult even for fully-grown adults.

Getty

The Daily News reports that Levi's first day of school concluded with a bus drive of five-hours, without any bathroom breaks, food or even water in the midst of one of the hottest summers on record. By the time he finally got out, "he was delirious, starving and in his full diaper," said his mother, Serena Vidal.

PLUS: What Is Autism

It wasn't a one-time occurrence, either. Though Levi's mother picked him up at school the next day (the drive took only 40 minutes), the day after he took the bus again and sat through an only slightly-less-grueling three-hour commute. When he got off, Serena discovered that the bus matron had given

By Sasha at Parenting.com
Who knew potty training could be so controversial? First, a mom gets slammed all over the internet for putting her kids on potty seats in a restaurant. And now a Philadelphia mom has been issued a ticket because her son peed on the sidewalk.

Here how it went down: Caroline Robboy was out shopping with her kids when her 2-year-old son Nathaniel, who is still working at toilet training, needed to use the bathroom. She asked to use the restroom at the clothing store they were in, but were refused. Outside the store and unable to hold it anymore, Nathaniel relieved himself near a lamppost. His mom tried to redirect him to a grassy spot, but was issued a $50 ticket for public urination.

Plus: How to Potty Train in a Week

"[The police officer] said, 'I'm doing this for your own protection because God forbid there might have been a pervert out there looking at my son,'" Robboy told local TV station NBC 10.

Do you think it's ever ok for kids to

Whooping Cough Protection Wanes Over Time

By: Caitlin at Parenting.com
A new study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that protection against whooping cough drops by 40 percent a year after the fifth and final dose of the vaccine series is administered.

Study author Dr. Nicola Klein, co-director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, told HealthDay,"If we estimate that after the fifth dose of vaccine, protection is at 95 percent, protection would decrease to 71 percent after five years."

PLUS: The Latest on the Pertussis Outbreak

The vaccine for pertussis, called DTaP, is given in a five-dose schedule from infancy to six years of age. A booster during adolescence is recommended, as is one in adulthood, although many people choose not to or don't know to get it.

In 2010, almost 28,000 Americans contracted pertussis, according to the CDC. The disease can be deadly in babies who haven't yet been vaccinated.

PLUS: 5 Vaccines Adults Need

Klein said that reformulating the current