Clever Currents

Children’s Cold and Cough Medicines – Can They Really Be So Dangerous? Yes.

Last month, the FDA issued this advisory warning to parents: NEVER give cough and cold medicines to children younger than 2 years old unless your doctor has instructed you to do so. The agency is very concerned about the hundreds of adverse reactions and several deaths resulting from popular children’s medicines containing dextromethorphan (often DM in a drug’s brand name) and pseudoephedrine (a decongestant). Adverse effects include hallucinations and abnormal movements (dextromethorphan) and increased blood pressure and irregular heartbeats (pseudoephedrine). Accidental overdoses happen for at least three reasons: 1) Parents buy different branded products that have the same active ingredient, and they give the child a double dose; 2) “Infant” formulations are about triple-strength to “children’s” strength (with a special dose-measurer because babies can only swallow so much fluid) and sleep-deprived parents can easily give the infant too much medicine; 3) A child with several well-meaning relatives and caregivers can be given medicine by each without the other’s knowledge. Pharmaceutical companies are now substituting the decongestant phenylephrine in place of pseudoephedrine in their over-the-counter versions due to FDA legislation.

The Blue Lake take on it:
This is a tough one. Children in the U.S. average 6-10 colds per year, many more than adults. When your child is sick, you would do almost anything to “make it go away.” It’s not worth the risk to give OTC cold/cough medicines to the under-2-years set without first talking to your pediatrician. But it is important to know that these active ingredients were approved for use in children years ago, before testing on children was required. Most children’s cough and cold formulations still have not been thoroughly tested in children, and recent studies show that they work no better than placebos. Read The American Medical Association’s article to find out more. We agree with the position of Dr. Wayne Snodgrass, the chair of The American Academy of Pediatrics who says, “Personally in a common cold in a young child, I wouldn’t recommend these agents.” Dr. Snodgrass is one of the authors of a petition to the FDA to ban marketing of these drugs for children less than 6 years of age. If you do decide to use these drugs, pay close attention to labels and educate yourself on dosages. The East Coast grocery chain Wegman’s has an online explanation of children’s medicinesincluding dosage guidelines.

I Really Think: Your Teenager Should Get A Job (and I am not talking about an internship)

If you are reading this, you are probably a parent whose goals include helping your child get the best start in life. Whether your child is 2, 8 or 16, you have probably spent lots of time thinking about how your child can be a success down the road. Today many parents start talking to their kids about college, even tangentially. My nephew Everett informed us at six that he and his best friend Noah would be roommates in college. At seven, he announced that he would be going to Boise State because they have a blue football field. I am all for painting a picture of higher education in your child’s mind – college years allow a teen to mature to a young adult in a reasonably safe place outside the home, and a college degree almost always increases your child’s options and earning power as an adult.

But is college the most formative stage on your path to a productive and satisfying adult life? It wasn’t for me – and I only really thought that through after being asked in an interview “What was the key life experience in your early years that has had the greatest impact in your entrepreneurial success?” Without even thinking about it, I said “My job at Winn Dixie”, and then I found I needed to explain myself.
For those of you who haven’t done your grocery shopping in the southern states of the U.S., Winn Dixie is a large grocery store chain. It may have changed in the 30 years since I lived in North Miami Beach, but I would say it serves the mid- to lower- end of the income demographic. I really don’t remember how I got the job, but as in so many of my key moves as a young person, my sister Jean (17 months older) actually made the decision first. So, at 16, I went down to Winn Dixie, filled out that application, and was thrilled to get the job. It paid $2.55 an hour, and you got two sky blue and white polyester uniforms. The full day of training was paid for, and I worked 3 nights per week and all day Sunday (double time pay!). All four of us kids took multiple jobs in our teen years, covering a broad spectrum of what an inexperienced kid could pick up quickly (popcorn stand cashier at the 163rd Street Movie Theater, busboy and hostess at Steak & Ale, “floater” at Jordan Marsh department store). It was not because we had to have money (that was nice of course). Our parents were public school teachers, and our basic needs were more than adequately covered. What was so great about that job? It boils down this: a menial job gives a teenager an exposure to “real life” that you simply can’t replicate. And that exposure is an education that prepares you for life.

For $2.55/hour, here’s what I learned:

• You get nervous when you apply for jobs. But you survive that. Like a lot of things that are scary to contemplate doing, once you have done it, it’s exhilarating, and you are proud of yourself for getting through something that made you nervous.
• Your attitude towards people will be reflected back at you. In most cases, being friendly and helpful to others has a real benefit to you.
• Some people will be rude to you. After this happens a few times, you realize their rudeness has nothing to do with you personally, and you learn to take a deep breath any move on.
• There will be ethical decisions in life, and you will be affected by them. One woman tried to pay with fake food stamps. I said I had to show them to my manager, and she left. I felt OK about that. Another woman wrote a suspicious check – I signaled in a hidden way to my manager, and he had her detained. She was arrested. She looked poor and scared. I wished I had just told her I couldn’t take that check, and let her leave.
• A lot of people have less than you. Your parents always tell you that. But when you find out that your favorite busboy shares a room with 5 siblings, takes a bus home (2 transfers) at 10 p.m. and gives his mom some of his paycheck for food – well, that sinks in a way that seeing starving kids on TV in a faraway land does not.
• When you have a job, you have to figure out how to get there. You are lucky if your parents let you take the station wagon.
• It’s important to get to work on time, and not to take longer breaks. Yes, you might “get away with it.” But people who do that get a reputation for being lazy, and then they don’t get important random opportunities that might come along – like managing the outdoor pumpkin stand sales.
• Uniforms can make your life easier. You can go directly from track practice to work and look crisp in 100% polyester. But, you feel grimy because you are. With better time management after practice, you can squeeze in a shower.
• A paycheck is a powerful thing. It has your name on it. It shows you how many hours you worked to get that money. It shows you that you paid taxes. You get to learn about taxes. At the end of the year, you can get some of them back if you take the time to do your tax returns.
• Once you realize that you can get paid for working, and that it can be fun (even stacking soup cans), you are hooked. I had happily applied for and took “menial” jobs all through college. They were fun, I met interesting people, and I always had a little extra cash.
• Stealing is bad. Again, your parents and teachers will have already told you this. But a real experience can drive it home. Stealing also makes you feel bad. One of the older, cooler cashiers showed me how at the end to the night, she would count her till, but before she would turn it in, she asked the assistant manager what her till should be, according to the computer. If she was “over” she would pocket most of the difference – she thought she deserved it. The night she told me about this, I did the same thing with her. I went home with a $1.50 “bonus” in my pocket. The money might not really have “belonged” to Winn Dixie, but it sure didn’t belong to me. I felt awful about taking that money. I still do. The silver lining is that the experience gave me the correct knee-jerk reaction for any future temptations to take something that isn’t mine.
• Some people don’t have the same values as you, and if you hang out with them, you might get in trouble. That till-skimming cashier and the assistant manager turned out to be in cahoots, and eventually, they were caught in a store audit. It also seemed like they were dating. Except he was married. At the time, I didn’t really put all these things together, but I think I internalized the lesson of “it’s a slippery slope” when you start to justify your bad behavior. And “friends” who help you do that are not your best bet.
• If you go above and beyond in the workplace, you get noticed. You get promoted. You get a raise. You get to meet the top managers when they come to tour the place. People think you are smart, and they trust you to manage yourself.

An internship is not the same. Often, your school, your parents or their friends help you get it. Just like home and school, you will be surrounded by people with similar backgrounds, and miss the exposure to the rest of local humanity and culture. You often don’t get paid so the work/reward connection is still abstract.
Not that teens really had that option in the seventies. If internships had been around, and if everybody thought it was the smartest thing to do, I suppose I might have been tempted to try and get one. You probably are thinking about this for your child. I read a very insightful editorial piece in The Wall Street Journal about the decline in paid work by teens (Today, 35% of teens have a paying job. In 1979, the figure was about 50%). The contributor was Kay S. Hymowitz, a well-known author on family and child development issues. You can read the article on the website of The Manhattan Institute, where Ms. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon fellow. In her WSJ piece, Ms. Hymowitz provides an excellent overview of why an internship, which on the surface seems to be a much better job for “resume-building,” is actually not as valuable as just a regular job at a restaurant or retail establishment. She also offers this observation from Neil Howe, an expert on age cohorts: Kids are so used to seeing immigrants doing that sort of work that they assume "I don't have to mess with food or cleaning stuff up." Ironically, the same kids whose parents are paying $4,000 for them to go to Oaxaca to build houses for the poor can't imagine working for money next to Mexican immigrants at the local Dunkin' Donuts.

I have talked with parents who don’t want their kids to take “jobs” in high school – they think their kids will be better served by concentrating on class work and extracurricular activities. They don’t need the money. Summers can be filled with more interesting activities that would look better on college applications*. Everything has its place – the best teachers showed me that it’s fun to use your mind, joining the track team taught me about discipline and endurance, but that job at Winn Dixie shaped me for a life in the real world of taking responsibility for myself, and gave me the foundation that serves me well as an entrepreneur and mentor today.

Oh, and I bought a really cool stereo with a turntable to take to UNC when I followed Jean there the next year.

* P.S. Your kid can write a killer essay for their Stanford application about why they decided to work at Ross Dress For Less instead of volunteering in Vietnam or working for free in the local congressman’s office. I think that will get her noticed. If it doesn’t work out, call me and I will give her a job

Is Organic Candy Any Better Than The Usual Stuff?

First off – I am a salt person, not a sweet tooth. However, when I was in sixth grade, I wrote a report on candy. This was decades before the internet, and my method was to copy paragraphs neatly out of World Book Encyclopedia, Volume C. I did tape some wrapped hard candies to the cover, and I think that may be why I got an A. I don’t follow the candy industry, but lately I have been hearing about organic candy, and skeptic that I am, I had to look into it. No World Books available, I started with Google. I found a very well-written candy blog by Cybele May, a playwright. As she points out, there are not that many “green candy” options at the big chain grocery stores. Cybele’s research convinced me that if you are willing to get online to find them, there are some substantially better candy products on the market today. You might even get your sixth-grader to write a report on it.

The Blue Lake take on it:
OK, it is still sugar. And we have made it clear our belief that kids are getting too much sugar (with lots of help from the marketers of sugar-laden cereals, “fruit drinks” and the like). Still, it’s hard to deny candy at Halloween, and we like the idea of supporting companies that make the effort to offer additive-free, naturally flavored and colored sweets. So if you are looking for a simple and different option for this year’s neighborhood goblins, you might try these organic lollipops from Yummy Earth (founded by two dads). They have cool flavors (pomegranate, mango, watermelon) and only 22 calories per lollipop. The calories are all sugar, but you can feel pretty good about the ingredient list. We just ordered the bonus pack of 220 lollipops, and with shipping it works out to about 14 cents each. If you get your child interested in the topic of organic food by starting with candy, they might be motivated to learn more about healthy and earth-friendly food production.

Podcast Storytime – Cool stories that you can download

Even if you have never thought of downloading a podcast, you will want to try this. This summer, we heard about small companies that were recording quality children’s stories and offering them at no charge. Of course, if you have an iPod or MP3 player, you can take these stories in the car or on a plane. But we have found that downloading a story to your PC or Mac works just fine – you can have your PC read aloud to your child after school or at bedtime (assuming you have a laptop). The opportunity to listen to a well-written story with no visuals, let alone animation, allows a child’s imagination to get a pleasurable work-out, and stimulates cognitive development.

The Blue Lake take on it: This is definitely worth a try. If you don’t have an iPod or MP3 player, just right click on the download icon and save the MP3 file to your PC. Here is a list of a few sources we have tried:

Storynory, from London, offers both original stories and classics like Alice in Wonderland. Not surprisingly, the narration carries a lovely English accent. Completely free, and at this time, ad-free.

Candlelight Books, has a couple of Brothers Grimm tales and a few others to download for free.

Librivox offers 160 classics in their Children’s catalog – all at no charge and with no commercials or ads. These are big stories, and need space: Black Beauty (130MB), The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter (102MB), Anne of Green Gables (302MB). A true labor of love, this volunteer-driven, ad-free organization says, “Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.'' They admit they are not likely to succeed – we applaud this amazing contribution.

Free Preschool – What’s not to love?

A lot of attention is paid to the widening gap between “haves” and “have nots.'' Coverage is concentrated on older kids and the challenges of equal access to technology and higher education. In our small company, we focus on what is happening with our youngest kids. In our visits with kindergartens and discussions with kindergarten teachers, the anecdotal evidence is strong: kids who have attended a quality pre-K program know what to expect in a classroom setting and are confidently ready for the next step. Kids who are in a classroom for the first time often feel that they don’t know what to do and they may decide that other children are “smarter.” So begins an association of school with intimidating situations and self-criticism. What is to be done? Like many states, Oregon’s Head Start Pre-K program narrows the gap, and yet there are very long waiting lists. Several states have very active groups working to get “universal preschool” into their education budgets. We found equally passionate groups who say that public programs drive up costs and reduce the market supply of private care programs. While both sides agree that the “first five” years are critical in educational development, the debate is whether we need a more formal approach to providing access to quality programs.

The Blue Lake take on it: Over five years of running this company, I have developed a firm belief that there is a real and debilitating inequity in access to preschool. At one end of the spectrum, we hear from parents of 3-year-olds competing for a place at exclusive pre-K programs with annual tuitions of over $12,000. We also receive calls from parents and grandparents, struggling to provide quality daycare at home, asking to order our magazine for their preschoolers on a payment plan – “Can I send you $4 month?” (We send them for free in those cases, if they will let us.) In July we met with Swati Adarkar, the Executive Director for the Oregon Children’s Institute, which recently published ''Investing in High Quality Pre-K: A Strategy for School Success.'' Swati’s passion for the topic and her intelligent approach to identifying programs that work have inspired us to develop ways we can help. Our first is a proposal to offer “scholarship subscriptions” to Head Start kids, and we plan to support the Children’s Institute in their efforts to make high quality pre-kindergarten programs available to all.

Baby Names – Parents Pay for the “Perfect” Name

With one notable exception, every aspect of having a baby was harder in the 1600’s. If you gave birth to a boy in the 17th century, giving him a name was a very simple task. In 1880, the 10 most popular boy’s names were given to 41% of boys born. The baby-naming exercise started taking on new significance only in the last century. In 2006, just 9.6% of boys were given a “top ten” name. Today, parents feel pressured to find the “right” name for their child – and traditional family names or religion-driven choices are out of favor. Studies show that first names have a measurable influence on first impressions, and parents’ desire to find the perfect name has spawned an entire industry. Thousands pay $20 or more to have names suggested by online baby name purveyors. We recently read about those who spent significantly more to find names ($350 resulted in Natalie) or to test names ($475 to get the numerologist’s stamp of approval on Leah Marie). It’s hard to imagine that naming a baby is ever going to be straightforward again.

The Blue Lake take on it: In children’s magazines, we see it all! Since a child’s name is the first word they will read and write, we have abandoned the industry standard databases – they simply cannot accommodate today’s longer names or the increasingly common desire to have the middle name printed on a child’s label. A child’s name does contribute to a first impression, as does appearance (the other big factor in a first impression), but a child’s ultimate level of happiness (or success, or popularity) is driven by their own ability to communicate with others and by discovering activities in which they excel and find enjoyment. Help your child build these skills. Of course, we are as fascinated by names as the next person – and if you haven’t already tried it, the U.S. Social Security Administration’s Baby Names database is very entertaining. Try entering your birth year and see where your name ranks. Decide for yourself whether having (or not having) a popular name has impacted your life – then share that story with your child.