But now, thanks to this diagram from babble.com, we may have a better idea of what’s up with those little urchins! Makes sense, right?

1. The B.R.A.T. for diarrhea. It stands for- Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast.

2. BLACK LICORICE will cure their constipation nine times out of ten!

3. The chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar creates a cooling effect that will soothe your child’s minor burns. Just pour equal amounts of the ingredients into a bowl to bathe your child’s hand till the burning stops.

4. For an earache, use a hot pack big enough so they can lay their head down to relieve the ache.

5. For a headache, before you go for the drugs try these three things: Give them a big drink of water. Rub their head/neck making sure to work out the knots. There is a pressure point between your thumb and pointer finger.

6. For teething take a wash cloth, wet the center with a little water, spread on a Tbl of apple sauce, roll it up, then freeze it. Babies love this b/c it’s sweet, chewy, & cold so it numbs their gums!

7. When their throat is killing them, make them “Grandmas Top Secret Lemon Honey Drink.” Heat 1 cup water, add 1 Tbsp lemon juice, and 1 1/2-Tbsp honey (never give honey to kiddos under 1 year).

* reprinted from pinterest.com

Check out these stats* and then share them with the dad in your life. It may be a shock to both of you.

• The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that obese children are more likely to live in father-absent homes than are non-obese children.

A study that looked at family lifestyle and parent’s Body Mass Index (BMI) over a nine year period found:

• Father’s Body Mass Index (BMI) predicted son’s and daughter’s BMI independent of offspring’s alcohol intake, smoking, physical fitness, and father’s education.
• BMI in sons and daughters was consistently higher when fathers were overweight or obese.
• Physical fitness of daughters was negatively related to their father’s obesity
• Obesity of fathers was associated with a four-fold increase in the risk of obesity of sons and daughters at age 18.
• A father’s body mass index (a measurement of the relative composition of fat and muscle mass in the human body) is directly related to a child’s activity level. In a study of 259 toddlers, more active children were more likely to have a father with a lower BMI than less active children.

A study that looked at dietary intake and physical activity of parents and their daughters over a two year period found:

• Daughter’s BMI was predicted by father’s diet and father’s enjoyment of physical activity.
• As father’s BMI rose, so did daughter’s BMI.
• A study that looked at the relationship between parent’s total and percentage body fat and daughter’s total body fat over a two and one-half year period found that father’s, not mother’s, total and percentage body fat was the best predictor of changes in daughter’s total and percentage body fat.

Two studies that have looked at the determinants of physical activity in obese and non-obese children found:

• Obese children are less likely to report that their fathers were physically active than were the children of non-obese fathers. This was not found for mothers.
• Fathers inactivity is a strong predictor of children’s inactivity.
• Children who live with single mothers are significantly more likely to become obese by a 6-year follow-up, as were black children, children with nonworking parents, children with nonprofessional parents, and children whose mothers did not complete high school.

* from the National Fatherhood Initiative

The theme of his ambassadorship, Reading is not Optional, leaves little doubt about his priorities. As a young man in Harlem, Myers hid his books so no one would know he liked to read. His message is to take reading seriously. It’s the most important ticket you will ever buy.

Read the interview and weigh in:

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Today, author Walter Dean Myers is being sworn-in at the Library of Congress as the nation’s third ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The two-year post is something like a youth version of the poet laureate. Myers wrote the bestseller “Monster.” He’s won numerous book awards in a career that’s spanned more than 30 years and a hundred titles. He mostly writes about African-American teenagers grappling with tough issues, like drug addiction, gangs and war; topics influenced by his own childhood as a high school dropout growing up in Harlem.

I asked Walter Dean Myers about the theme of his upcoming ambassadorship, which he said is going to be: Reading Is Not Optional.

That’s a pretty tough slogan to adopt as an ambassador trying to convince young people to read. Well, why did you choose it?

WALTER DEAN MYERS: Well, the problem is very often books are looked upon as a wonderful adjunct to our lives. It’s so nice. Books can take you to faraway places and this sort of thing. But then it all sounds as if it’s something nice but not really necessary. And during my lifetime things have changed so drastically. You can’t do well in life if you don’t read well.

GREENE: You’re saying that it’s become even more important to read than when you were growing up. Well, why is that? What’s changed in society?

MYERS: Well, what’s changed in society, you had more industrial jobs than when I was coming up. My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn’t read. The average working person could work in a factory but now you don’t have those anymore. And not only that, but the jobs that you do have may not be around in five years.

GREENE: You know, I’m struck by this image of you as a young man walking through the streets of Harlem, hiding your books because you didn’t want anyone to know that you enjoyed reading so much. And I wonder if your story was exceptional. What? Is there a secret to having a young man or a young woman growing up on the tough streets, you know, getting interested in reading?

MYERS: I think it’s difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They’re embarrassed to have people see them doing it.

One of the problems is that kids who don’t read – who are not doing well in school – they know they’re not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category.

GREENE: And so, what is your message to a kid who sort of things that reading might be something good, who knows that it could make their life better but they’re just not feeling it?

MYERS: Well, one of the things that I want to do is to get very, very young kids being read to; kids 3 months, 4 months. If I can get every kid over the next two years, who’s born, have their parents read to them or a grandparent or an uncle, or whoever read with them, it’ll make a difference in the country. And what needs to happen is that the parent interacts with the child. And it doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out process.

Now, my mom did not read well and she read True Romance magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the True Romance. And that was wonderful.

GREENE: Your own writing and has been described as having a hard-core, hard-edged realism. And I’d like you to read an excerpt from one of your well-known books from 2001, “Monster.” It was about a 16-year-old African-American who was jailed for the alleged involvement in the murder of a convenience store owner. Read a bit of that for me, if you can.

MYERS: (Reading) The best time to cry it is at night when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and they’re screaming for help. That way, even if you sniffle a little, they won’t hear you. If anybody knows that you are crying they’ll start talking about it, and soon it’ll be your turn to get beat up when the lights go out.

GREENE: And is that excerpt – a teenager talking about being in prison?

MYERS: Yes. Yes. You know, I visit prisons a lot. And I visit juvenile prisons a lot. And I’m appalled at the reading levels. You know, in New York State only 40 percent of kids in the eighth grade are reading proficient. And that’s 40 percent of white kids. Black kids, it’s down to about 15 percent.

GREENE: Your literature is not exactly the escapism of “Harry Potter,” I think we can safely say. Why the stark reality? I guess some people would say if you’re writing for teenagers, maybe you want to, you know, kind of get into their sense of imagination and not drive home the struggles of life.

MYERS: Right. What happens to these teenagers is that they reach a point in which reading becomes a challenge and only an opportunity to fail. Reading is not a pleasure for these kids. And Dr. Alfred Tatum from the University of Chicago points out that’s what the text has to contain is some clue about those kids’ humanity; some clue about that this book is OK for him to look at.

So he wants to see characters in the book that might look like him or like his family. He wants to see a neighborhood that is like his neighborhood. Because what happens, when he gets up in the morning and he goes out from his house, and he looks around and he sees everyone who looks like as he looks – who is unemployed, who don’t have jobs – that’s part of his education, too.

GREENE: Two years from now, you will finish your term as ambassador. What achievements do you hope to accomplish and look back on?

MYERS: Well, what I hope to do is to get mentoring groups involved with the community. I hope to find ways of reaching children that are not being reached today.

GREENE: Author Walter Dean Myers is being sworn in today and as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Mr. Ambassador, if I can call you that now, thank you so much for joining us on the program.

MYERS: Well, thank you for having me.

GREENE: And congratulations to you.

IF YOU GIVE A GIRL A TOOL BELT

She will learn what each tool does.

She will learn to take things apart.

She will learn to build.

She will learn to fix.

She will learn how to measure.

She will understand how things work.

She will know that she is capable.

She will be empowered.

She will dream bigger.

The concept behind the campaign is that parents need to face facts: Your child is too fat and it’s dangerous.

The ads are meant to draw attention to the childhood obesity epidemic, however, they’ve drawn mixed reactions from both parents and health experts, who have called their effectiveness into question. Some say the campaign is more likely to increase stigmatization against overweight children and make them feel ashamed of their bodies, rather than encourage healthy habits.

But the health organization produced these ads after they discovered that 75 percent of parents with obese children are not aware that their children were overweight, while 50 percent of parents don’t realize that childhood obesity is a problem to begin with. In a state where nearly 40 percent of children are overweight or obese – Georgia is in 2nd place for childhood obesity rates nationwide behind Mississippi — these statistics are a problem.

14-year-old Maya Walters, one of the children pictured in the ads, says …