Blog Posts by Parenting.com

Creative Ways to Announce PregnancyBy Alina Soler

Got a bun in the oven? Congratulations! Here are some funny, cute, and totally creative ways to break the news to your family and friends when you're ready to announce your pregnancy, from our Facebook fans!

More From Parenting.com:

Hilarious Awkward Pregnancy Photos

When To Announce You're Pregnant

Gorgeous Birth Announcement Cakes

16 Early Signs Of Pregnancy

By Sasha Emmons

Veer

With tragic story of a mass shooting in Colorado flashing on the news this morning, parents may find themselves awkwardly fielding questions from their kids. How do you explain that scary events do occur while still making your children feel safe?

We talked to Dr. Paul Coleman, author of How to Say It to Your Child When Bad Things Happen, to find out the best ways to talk to kids about disturbing images and events.

Wait until they're older. Until around age 7, Dr. Coleman suggests only addressing the tough stuff if kids bring it up first. "They might see it on TV or hear about it at school (or heaven forbid even witness it), and then you have to deal with it. But younger children might not be able to handle it well," says Dr. Coleman.

Keep it black and white. Yes, the world can be a cruel place, but little kids, well, can't handle the truth."Younger kids need to be reassured that this isn't happening to them and won't happen to them," says Dr. Coleman.

BrazilBy Taylor Newman

In Brazil, a country notorious for its staggeringly high C-section rates - numbers in some private hospitals push 99% - protestors participated in a "Home Birth March" last month in the nation's state capitals: Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Maceió, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Paulo and Vitória. The protests followed public criticism levied against the coordinator of the obstetrics department at the Federal University of São Paulo, Dr. Jorge Kuhn, by the Regional Council of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro; Kuhn had recently defended home births, and childbirth in general as a pyshiological - rather than medical - process (kind of our headline here on Natural Parenting). The march, as a result, was held not only to support a woman's right to choose home birth as an option, but also to opt for a vaginal (rather than cesarean-by-default) delivery, as well.

Plus: Men Bash Breastfeeding on Twitter

Although Kuhn's, and

Yes, there may actually be a bright side to the national financial crisis.

Plus: Answering Kids Toughest Money Questions

Research shows that when times are tough, Americans actually get healthier. It sounds odd -- you'd think the downturn would make us more likely to binge on junk food or drink away our sorrows -- but not so, says researcher Chris Ruhm, Ph.D., professor of economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "As the economy gets worse, people tend to smoke and drink less to cut costs. They also don't eat out as much, which translates into consuming less fat and calories."

Another perk: We get more fit. Recessions can free up time for exercise due to, unfortunately, having our hours or jobs cut. And needing to save on entertainment costs leads us to choose free activities like hiking. In one study, even obesity rates and deaths from heart disease plummeted during tough times. This all adds up to, on average, a healthier

school bus

By Deborah At Parenting

I'll be the first to say it: It's time to leave the school bus bullies alone.

In case you've been in detention for the past week, a loathsome foursome of seventh-grade boys are in hot water-well, actually in a one-year suspension from school-after a video of them taunting their bus monitor, Karen Klein, went viral. But as horrible as their behavior was, our reaction as adults is even more troubling. According to one bully-boy's dad, his son has received thousands of death threats.

Plus: VIDEO: Dad Gives 12-Year-Old Public Punishment for Stealing

We all get outraged when we hear about kids whose parents publicly punish them by, say, making them stand in the mall with a sign proclaiming "I SHOPLIFTED." They're just children!, we gasp, as we wonder how evil those parents must be. Yet thanks to the Internet, and viral videos, misbehaving kids are humiliated before millions of people, not just the few passing by on their way to The Pottery Barn. And

by Melanie at Parenting.com

14w,1d. It's kind of mortifying to admit, but I think I might have Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James to thank-well, at least in part-for this baby, due on 1/2/13.

At my book club the other night, we discussed (and laughed about) the book. I hadn't known that the group was meeting that night until about an hour beforehand, but as my husband had taken the kids away for the evening and I'd already read the book (already read the entire trilogy, in fact), I headed over, happy to catch up with new friends for the first time in a couple of months.

Most of the women had mixed reactions to the book-glad that some women who might otherwise be too embarrassed to talk about sex and trying new things were able to open up a bit more, but kind of embarrassed themselves to have been seen reading the book in public and rather disappointed in the quality of the writing. While admittedly, I didn't remember that much of what I had read, given that I sped

Candy applesby Shawn at Parenting

A waffle with peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, chocolate chips and honey. Sometimes washed down with chocolate milk. That's what our youngest boy eats for breakfast. Every. Single. Day. On some mornings, he'll delicately rake his fork across the waffle's gooey topography to collect all the chocolate chips. He daintily eats his little pile, and ignores the rest. Of course, we don't let him get away with that. He'll miss all the vitamins and minerals in the marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, and honey.

Last Sunday morning, I came downstairs to find the boy already awake. There he sits on the living room carpet chewing gum, a little bag of Technicolor gumballs from AJ's Candy Castle on his lap. He sees me, and grins proudly. His gob opens and closes dramatically, like a hungry, hungry hippo, only hungrier.

PLUS: Healthy Grab-and-Go Snacks

His favorite thing in life is chocolate. M&M are his Valium, Hershey's Kisses his Xanax. His favorite movie

by Shawn at Parenting

We don't like our children killing aliens on video games. Some of us don't even like our children fighting those mean spiky-shelled turtles in Super Mario Brothers.

We don't like it when our kids hit each other. We don't let our kids watch the local news-too many murders and natural disasters. We have an especially hard time stomaching what happened to Trayvon Martin and Caylee Anthony. We get antsy and annoyed when our kids point toy guns at us. We're okay with zombies and ax murderers only on Halloween. In short, parents don't like violence and death. Not that anyone is okay with it, but for moms and dads-life factories that we are-death is our antithesis.

Which makes the sad story out of Shiner, TX, even more disconcerting. Following the sound of his 5-year-old daughter's cries, a 23-year-old dad finds her behind a barn, being sexually assaulted by a man named Jesus Flores. The dad pulls Flores off