Keeping our kids safe is the #1 priority for every parent.  However, most of us keep poisonous cleaning products in our homes, easily accessible to children.  The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported that exposure to many popular household cleaning substances can be serious enough to require treatment in a medical health facility.  Unsafe cleaning products can be more dangerous than a loaded gun.  The National Safety Council reported that, “more children under four die of accidental poisonings at home than are accidentally killed with a loaded gun at home.  You wouldn’t keep a loaded gun under your sink or in your bathroom, yet millions of households keep extremely dangerous household products where children or pets might accidentally get into them.

Most common cleaning products that are purchased at the grocery store contain warning labels that the products are dangerous, poisonous, or flammable.  Chlorine, found in bleach can cause damage to the skin, eyes and other permeable membranes.  Oven cleaners are so highly corrosive and can cause severe respiratory distress.  Keeping these products in our homes, and using them in our homes pollutes our air indoors, posing serious risks to those in the home.  In a 15 year study releases at the Toronto Indoor Air Conference, women who work at home had a 54% higher death rate from cancer than those who worked away from home.  The study concluded that the deaths were a direct result of increased exposure to toxic chemicals–many of which are found in common household cleaning products.

A favorite choice of ours is Shaklee’s Get Clean products. They are earth friendly choices, they are easy on your checkbook, and are more powerful than the other organic comparative cleaning products!   Shaklee doesn’t test on animals, either which we really like!

Or, for more information, go to Shaklee’s website.

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We love this site we recently found called MitzvahMarket.com   Mitzvah Mail is a free email newsletter designed for all Bar/Bat Mitzvah planning moms and can be found on their site. Every Thursday, they profile a child getting a bar mitzvah and their Mitzvah Project.

Blankets of Love
Tari of Camarillo, CA, celebrated her Bat Mitzvah earlier this year. As part of her rite of passage, Tari organized a Mitzvah Project that would benefit Operation: Blankets of Love. The organization collects items for animals in shelters, to make the animals more comfortable.

“I collected blankets, towels, washcloths, sheets, and pet beds for 3 months,” Tari tells Mitzvah Mail. “I put boxes at my temple, and I put boxes at my school. Once both boxes were overflowing (which happened a lot), I would contact the head of the foundation, Eileen Smulson. I would then arrange a meeting point and give her the blankets to take to pounds and shelters. Then I would collect some more.”

The idea is that by making the animals more comfortable, it could help to save their lives. “Operation: Blankets of Love works with dogs, cats and other animals in the pounds. When the animal is more comfortable (with a blanket) then they tend to be adopted more often, saving animals’ lives.”

We want to thank Tari for sharing her Mitzvah Project with us. You really are making a difference, Tari!

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This summer, families are staying home more – eating out less, spending less on entertainment, and taking “staycations”. However, this doesn’t have to feel like a sacrifice for your family. With a little creativity and planning, there are plenty of really fun summer activities that will keep your kids busy, get the family out of the house, and make the most of summer vacation. We’ve come up with a list of our favorite low-cost ideas on how to inject some fun into summer without leaving home or breaking the bank.

Backyard Camping.
Summer just isn’t summer without camping out under the stars. But you don’t have to leave town to have an authentic camping experience. You can use the opportunity to teach your kids about constellations, or listen to the sounds of the night and try to identify their source – this is a great way to turn fear of the dark into a giggle fest. If you’ve got a fire pit, help them make s’mores. Gather around the fire with your treats and tell stories in a round robin format, where one person starts the story then hands it off to the person sitting next to them, and so on. Hang out in playtents in the backyard.

Plant a Garden.
Kids love digging in the dirt, so take a trip to a nursery and let them pick out flowers, vegetables, or herbs for their own Kids-Only garden. If you have a green thumb, share your knowledge and enthusiasm with your kids and teach them how to care for their plants. They’ll love watching their gardens grow throughout the summer, and it might even encourage them to eat their veggies! If they are more artsy than outdoorsy, have them paint their own flower pots, stepping stones, or Garden Gnomes to contribute to the family garden.

Build your own backyard miniature golf course.
Instead of using plastic cups for the holes, use flower pots and designate each hole with gardening stakes. Have the kids make flags out of old fabric – T-shirts, rags, etc. - and tape them to the stakes. Then design your course, using household objects and the natural topography to increase difficulty and keep the game interesting. Hint: garage sales are great places to find cheap, sturdy, weather-resistant obstacles. If you have some old putters, use them. There are some cute mini golf sets out there that are fun and easy for toddlers. At the end of the summer after the kids have been practicing on the backyard “course”, have a tournament. Or have an obstacle course for your kids.

Put on a Talent Show.
This can be a great activity for the kids to do with their friends, or make it a production and invite the whole neighborhood to get involved. Not a performer? Every talent show needs a host. Aspiring artists and film producers can work on stage design, make a banner to hang behind the “stage,” and video tape the performances. Kids will get a kick out of choreographing their routines and creating costumes – not to mention watching the show.

Water Park at Home.
This can be a lot of fun if you team up with other neighborhood parents. Each house can host its own activity – water balloon toss, slip and slide, sprinklers, car wash, water gun wars. All that splashing and running around is sure to make any kids ravenous. Break up the day with a potluck picnic.

Summer entertainment doesn’t have to cost a lot of money – all it takes is a little imagination, a little energy, and a little planning. When having fun together is the focus, you’ll find that it’s surprisingly easy to enjoy yourselves without spending big bucks or even leaving home. Hopefully, these wallet-friendly suggestions will help get the creative juices flowing this summer.

Sue Kirchner is the founder of www.ChocolateCakeClub.com, an e-boutique that offers busy moms products to help them get organized, encourage kids to be more self-sufficient, and distinguish them as Moms-who’ve-got-it-together with must-have gifts and parenting tools. She also writes the blog, www.ChocolateCakeMoments.com sharing tips and ideas on how to have more family fun. When not working, she’s home having fun with her husband and two children.

Check out more great summer tips by Ria Sharon of My Mommy Manual on this video at  Channel 4 KMOV

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Is your child teaching you about the internet? With computers bridging the gap between school, social life and home, it’s not surprising that children of all ages are logging in for homework, entertainment, games or communication.
With our children wandering the web, we need to do a little bit of homework ourselves.  Why? Most parents use scripts learned from their parents. Sometimes whole sermons have been memorized from a time in the distant past. Very few of us, however, were raised using the internet. Many of us don’t have a script or a plan for the computer when parenting but we really need one.
We were taught to cross the road safely; our kids cross oceans on the internet. We were taught to immediately leave a burning home or dangerous situation; our kids need to learn how to get away from scary people or sites online. We were taught not to let a stranger through the front door; our children meet these strangers every day and welcome them into their lives, their thoughts and sometimes, their bedrooms.
While it starts to feel like it might be easier to just pitch the computer out the window, it’s all about educating yourself and your family. This is the way our teens connect with their peers so rather than forcing our heads into the sand and denying our kids access to “the gang”, we need to Parent with a Plan™.
The plan can begin with an internet safety policy or pledge. You can find those at www.netsmartz.org.
In our technology awareness workshops, parents tell us,
“My daughter knows more about ‘passwords, policies and monitoring’ stuff than I do. She could get through it in a second. Besides, I trust her, we don’t need it.”
At Parenting Power, we believe in showing our children that we trust them. It’s people on the other side of the screen that we don’t necessarily trust. We also know that one of the best ways to protect our children is to teach them to protect themselves. We encourage you to set up a separate login for each of your children. This will protect them from information that is inappropriate for their age. It will also protect your own privacy by preventing children from stumbling across your visa numbers, bill information, banking passwords, etc.
With so many benefits coming from the world of technology, another way to give our children power is by teaching them ways to protect themselves online. Pornography, drug vendors, and cyberbullies exist in this environment. By learning from our children and talking with them about our concerns, we can help them to stay safe.
There are many wonderful websites created to educate children of any age or computer experience. Below are just a few that may be of help you to learn how to talk with your kids about what lies ahead for them online.
www.badguypatrol.ca (5-10 years)
www.weron2u.ca (10+years)
www.bewebaware.ca (safety tips by age to assist you in educating yourself and your children)
www.netsmartz.org
www.webwisekids.org

If that all sounds too complicated, here is one thing that you can do that will help your children to protect themselves:
Teach your children how to get away from a website or an internet stranger that makes them feel uncomfortable. Post these instructions right on your family computer:
•    Press control+alt+delete
•    Press ESC (top left hand of keyboard) it means escape
•    Turn off the computer
•    Walk away from the computer
•    Tell Mom or Dad (post a work phone number if you won’t be in the home)
•    Tell them that they won’t get in trouble and that you want them to come for help if they need it.
By encouraging your children to come to you for help, you are showing that you trust them and are with them every step of the way. We need to protect our children from strangers they know, those that they think they know and those that they don’t know. By establishing good habits from the start, our children will know the safest ways to travel the World Wide Web.

This article is reprinted with permission from Julie Freedman Smith and Gail Bell of Parenting Power™.
They believe that there is more than one “Right way to parent.” Using over 40 years of combined experience, Julie and Gail have inspired thousands of parents to Parent with a Plan™. Their toll-free parenting courses, recordings, magazine articles and telephone coaching help to ease the stress and guilt of parents while providing practical solutions to everyday parenting difficulties. Visit www.parentingpower.ca. Contact them today at info@parentingpower.ca to get your free copy of Five Ways to stay Confident, Capable, Calm.

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We love this site we recently found called MitzvahMarket.com   Mitzvah Mail is a free email newsletter designed for all Bar/Bat Mitzvah planning moms and can be found on their site. Every Thursday, they profile a child getting a bar mitzvah and their Mitzvah Project.

Keeping Babies Safe
In honor of her Bat Mitzvah on 1/10/09, Lauren Davis organized a one-mile walk and “family fun day” that was held in September 2008. The event was designed to benefit Keeping Babies Safe, a non-profit organization that Lauren and her family have been involved with since 2005. Lauren’s older sister Eliza started the walk as her Mitzvah Project; Lauren’s was the 2nd annual walk.

The walk, called Walk, Laugh, Smile, Remember Garret, was created in memory of Garret, Lauren’s and Eliza’s baby brother, who passed away due to an unsafe crib. The accident was completely preventable had there been proper information available, the type of information that Keeping Babies Safe works hard to make known. Lauren and her mom Joyce spoke to the crowd of over 500 people about the importance of this organization and its mission. In the past two years, Lauren and her family have helped to raise over $100,000 for KBS and enough money to launch Project Safe Crib.  For every $100 they raise, a new crib is purchased for those less fortunate.

Because of the Davis family and their unwavering devotion to this cause, in August 2008, President Bush signed the Consumer Safety Improvement Act of 2008. This Act improves the safety of baby cribs by requiring second-hand cribs to match the same safety requirements as new cribs, prohibiting the resale of unsafe cribs, and prohibiting hotels from using unsafe cribs.

By generating awareness of KBS, the Davis family hopes to help prevent what happened to their son Garret from happening to others. If you would like to learn more about Keeping Babies Safe, please visit Keeping Babies Safe on the Web.

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