May, 2010

Beijing residents should think twice before purchasing a tricycle for their kids for Children’s Day. The Global Times reported that tests in Guangdong Province have shown that only 40 percent of the baby tricycles examined met all of the safety requirements. 

In Shanghai, 30 percent of the tricycles tested were not safe for toddlers due to poor handlebar design and faulty positioning of the pedals and handbrakes. 

Safety concerns with the Guandong tricycles included “excessive amounts of removable substances that toddlers can peel off and swallow, such as paint, which may cause chronic poisoning in young children.” 

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The Olympic Games may be long gone but a nagging uncertainty over what to do with the iconic Birds Nest, which has gone from waidi tourist attraction, to would-be football stadium, possible shopping mall and a temporary Snow and Ice World has lingered ever since.

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Desperate parents are calling on family therapist Alyson Schafer to save them from countless tantrums, messy rooms and broken bedtime deadlines. Honey, I Wrecked the Kids: When Yelling, Screaming, Threats, Bribes, Time-Outs, Sticker Charts and Removing Privileges All Don’t Work takes parenting to a positive level, outlining a system for discovering the reasons behind a child’s misconduct, among other tactics. 

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Looking for a delicious way to get nutrition back in your diet?

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6. An apple a day…

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, right? The truth is that we have to eat a lot more than just an apple a day to stay healthy. We must consume plenty of different fruits and vegetables to benefit from the many vitamins, minerals and enzymes they contain. I like to tell my kids that they need to eat a rainbow of foods. Our plates should be filled with colour; the orange of squash, the red of tomatoes, the purple of cabbage and the green of bok choy. Living in China we are very lucky to have such a wide selection of fruits and vegetables to choose from. Add variety to your diet and try something new. The Canadian Food Guide  recommends eating seven to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day! See what the World Health Organization has to say about the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables.

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You’re not alone. Researchers have finished analyzing 1,540 hours of videotape of the daily lives of 32 U.S. families, and found plenty of resistant children and parents stressed to the max. Social scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles documented every waking moment of various Los Angeles households with the hope to find out more about the lives of “the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class” American family.

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What’s the secret to a happy marriage? Is it sexy lingerie and rose petals strewn over a king size bed? A diamond ring every anniversary? Separate His and Hers vacations? Although all of the above will certainly help, the art of conflict resolution is the true key to a lasting and happy relationship.

 
Conflict is inevitable in life. With your boss, colleague, neighbor, parent, sibling, children; but the hottest buttons always seem to be the ones your partner hits.
 
Some of the more common and least effective ways of dealing with conflict are:
 
The Silent Treatment
You keep quiet while your eyes burn into him like laser-hot beams, unfortunately you’re not from the planet Krypton so it has the same searing intensity of yesterday’s Jell-O. You remain uncommunicative except when asked if anything is wrong and you reply, “Nothing.” This requires a lot of patience and controlled fuming, especially if business travel takes him out of the picture for a few days. This can also cause consecutive nights of insomnia as you lie awake, tossing with righteous indignation, while he at the same time is thinking “ZZZzzzzzz…” 
 

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Tomorrow night, May 26, you can both help a worthy local charity and possibly stick it to the reigning champs of the charity quiz circuit, True Run Media, by turning up at the Sanlitun location of Schindler’s for the Magic Hospital Charity Quiz Night … in the process you’ll be in the running for a veritable booty of wonderful prizes.

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A three-year-old Chinese boy, Howard Wong, has made his YouTube debut drumming to the song 美好特质, (Beautiful Quality) at a mall. ChinaHush posted three videos of the young star, and offers a 10 percent discount to install Freedur VPN software to view content on YouTube.

To watch the ChinaHush videos, click here.

You might already know that soda can cause tooth decay and add extra pounds to your figure, but new research has added another deterrent to the list: cholesterol. 

The study shows that those who consume foods or drinks with high amounts of added sugar will have “higher levels of harmful triglycerides than those with diets lower in such sweeteners,” according to The New York Times. Participants in the study revealed that 15.8 percent of calories consumed in 24 hours were from added sugars.

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Babies can tell the difference between good and bad before they can muster “mama,” according to a new study performed by Yale psychology professor, Paul Bloom. His findings indicate that young ones might have a wired sense of morality as early as six months after they’re born.

Researchers presented children between the ages of 6-and 10-months with a puppet show that displayed a struggling puppet being helped and then hindered. After the performance, babies could pick between the “nice” and the “mean” puppet, and an overwhelming amount picked the nice one.

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Some people go to zoo to see animals grazing and lounging in their own habitat. Now, visitors can feast on these wild creatures at the zoo. A restaurant at the Beijing Zoo is serving up some shocking and appalling items on their menu, including deer tendon (RMB 100), camel paw (RMB 200) and even the consumption of an already endangered species: shark fin soup (RMB 880). If there were ever a time for animal lovers to unite, it’s now.

 The knot that keeps couples tied together might rely heavily on genetics, according to a New York Times article. A biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied a gene related to the regulation of a bonding hormone in the brain, finding that “men who carried a variation in the gene were less likely to be married, and those who had wed were more likely to have serious marital problems or unhappy wives.”

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To celebrate Children’s Day this year, The Children's House have selected a collection of outstanding art pieces created by their students to be exhibited at The China World Trade Center Shopping Mall. The grand opening of the exhibition will take place from 10:30am on Monday, 24th May and will run through until June 2nd. World-renowned artist, Zeng Fan Zhi will officially open the exhibition.

A Beijing school has possibly felt the effects of hand-foot-and-mouth disease after five children were reportedly diagnosed with the disease on Tuesday. All of those allegedly infected children received health check-ups at their Xingxing branch of the Huijia Kindergarten in Changping district. A mother claims that her 3-year-old child had a rash after the Friday check-up, and doctors diagnosed her with the virus Sunday. School representatives have not at this time confirmed that the Friday check-ups caused the HMFD outbreak, according to the Global Times.

Read more beijingkids HMFD coverage here.

Tired of carrying wads of Reminbi to pay for the weekly groceries? Overseas credit card fees really hitting the wallet? Have no fear, the Chinese banks are here! It’s time to get yourself a local bank account with an ATM debit card. All places in China that accept credit cards accept bank debit cards (Unionpay) and can be used without additional fees.

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 Every girl has seen her best friend with a new purse, and the first question out of her mouth is, “Where did you get that?” Soon, she and her pal are proudly sporting matching handbags. Recent studies show that these copycat tendencies can apply to improving your child’s test scores.

Cornell economist Kirabo Jackson examined the high school performance of students attending top Trinidadian schools with academically savvy peers. His results suggest “boys may, in fact, pass fewer exams when surrounded by high-achievers, while girls' graduation exam pass rates are helped by having bookish classmates,” according to a Slate article.

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A mother on Twitter said that her child’s school in Beijing has a recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease. It is “a virus that usually peaks during the hot months, has already killed 260 children in China this year and sickened hundreds of thousands more, the government said Friday,” a CTV News article reported this month.

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 On any TV reality show worth its salt, there comes an episode where the contestant, thousands of miles away from home is rewarded by getting a phone call from a loved one. He/she breaks down in blubbering sobs as Spouse/Mom/Dad speak their undying love and quickly remind them to play nice to avoid getting voted out at the next tribal council.

Now, not that we’re confronted with reality show challenges like eating scorpions, animal blood or trying to decode puzzles made up of words represented by pictographs (uh, wait a moment here…am I on – TV?), but the importance of the simple telephone connection grows exponentially as we hear news of a business opportunity, gossip about Uncle Jim, and make plans for an upcoming visit from Granny. Unfortunately, the most obvious barrier to calling home is the expense. Typical landline rates to the USA/UK on Beijing Telecom are RMB 8 per minute. From the USA to China, rates average USD 0.15 a minute.
 

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Many parents resort to desperate measures when trying to placate their screaming child, especially in public arenas. How many times have parents said, “If you behave yourself, I’ll buy you a toy!"

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The 2010 National Equestrian Masters’ Competition will be held at Equuleus International Riding Club from May 22 to 23. Nine provincial teams and over 40 riders from Guangdong, Shanghai, Xinjiang, Hubei and Tibet will compete in this trial for the Asian Games, the highest level of national competition.

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 A new study claims that a face cream made from breast milk cures teenage acne.

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