Pediatricians urge parents to never take eyes off children while they are even near the water

The Internet is exploding over a floating baby, but it turns out the adults calmly watching are doing everything right. No matter how old - or young - your children are, you need to watch them in the water - vigilantly.

The American Academy of Pediatrics could not be more forceful in its recommendations for water safety.

“The bottom line principle for all children is you must have your eyes on the child,” said Elie Ward, New York State spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

That said, the doctors’ group firmly believes children should be taught to swim. Yet there is no magic age when it is all supposed to come together. And the group does not sanction one method of instruction over another.

Megan Fox says social media is ‘toxic’ to kids

OMG! LOL! WTF?

Social media is so “toxic,” that kids should be kept off it, actress and mom Megan Fox says.

Megan Fox

"It's really toxic for our youth culture," Fox told Entertainment Tonight from the set of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2.” "There is a hierarchy in schools of who's the cool kid based on who has the most followers and who has the most likes. It's a really terrible message to wake up every day and have your kids going, 'Who liked my photo?' and 'Who's following me?'"

68 Percentage IDPs are children —Dogara

ABUJA—Speaker of the House of Representatives, yesterday, said 68 per cent of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in Nigeria were children.

Speaking at the sensitisation workshop and launch of UNHCR hand book, “On Internal Displacement for Parliamentarians,” Dogara said statistics from the UNHCR showed that 68 per cent of IDPs in Nigeria were children, adding that there had been about 60,000 births in IDP camps so far.

The speaker further stressed that today’s event offered the opportunity to restate the fact that there was no adequate legal framework for handling issues of internal displacement.

According to him, though Nigeria at the executive level has ratified the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention), it has not yet been domesticated by the legislature.

Are Tablet Computers affecting Children’s ability to read?

Since the invention of the television, a box you could put children in front of and leave them passively entertained, nothing has changed how children spend their time as much as the tablet computer.

Four years ago, just seven per cent of 5- to 15-year-olds in the UK had access to a tablet. By last year it was 71 per cent. Some 34 per cent of this age group even owned the tablets themselves, as well as 11 per cent of three- to four-year-olds, according to Ofcom figures.

Kim Kardashian vs. Kate Middleton on dressing the kids:

It’s hard to think of two more different celebrity moms than Kim Kardashian and Kate Middleton. And their biggest contrast might be the way they dress their kids.

While Kim styles North West in runway-ready Balmain leather jackets, the duchess of Cambridge likes to see Prince George and Princess Charlotte in highly traditional clothes. Confidenti@l talked to Rachel Riley , the designer of several of the little royals’ outfits, about the trend — led by Kardashian and the likes of Gwen Stefani and Victoria Beckham — of dressing tots like they’re being dropped off at a Vogue shoot, not preschool.

What Three-Year-Olds Can Teach Us

Someone told me recently about a two-hour flight they took, sitting next to a couple holding their infant and an iPad housed in a whimsical, child-friendly frame. 

The entire flight, the parents kept playing one animation of a train over and over again. The moment it stopped, the kid wailed — I mean, really wailed, blood-curdling screams that could be heard up and down the aisles — and then they would press start, the kid would pipe down and the same thing happened over and over again. Both parents and kid got increasingly frenzied and frantic — and I would bet more than a few of the passengers did, too. 

The rise of Father and Daughter Businesses

The chairman in question is her parent, Sri Ram, and together they run Supreme Creations, the UK's largest producer of reusable shopping bags made from natural fibres.

For 16 years the business has been making jute, canvas and cotton bags for everyone from UK supermarkets Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's, to US sportswear giant Nike, and fashion retailer Top Shop.

Set up by Mr Ram, his daughter convinced him to let her join the business six years ago when she was 22.

He made her work her way up from the bottom at the firm's London head office.

When Ms Sriram joined the company it only made plain reusable bags, but her big idea was to introduce fashion designs. And as a result, sales rose sharply, and last year she was made chief executive.

Spare the rod, says research

Punishing pupils for bad behaviour with humiliation or by administering corporal punishment only aggravates disciplinary problems at schools, a new research paper has suggested. 

 

What was required at schools was an approach to discipline which considered the personal circumstances and needs of children, a senior social work lecturer at the University of the Free State, Roelf Reyneke, argued in his paper.

Why you must start early to expose your children to money

One of the reasons many of us have financial challenges is because we don’t have an understanding of money. Our parents never taught us about it, and the schools totally overlooked this field of study. Our children therefore deserve better so we must commit to providing financial training for them.

 

Various experts differ regarding when to start training

Nigeria, others miss 2015 goal of primary schooling for all

Only half of countries have achieved a global target of getting all children into primary school by 2015, some 58 million youngsters are still getting no education at all, but more girls are going to school, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Just one third of countries have met a 2015 deadline for six key educational goals agreed by governments in 2000, the U.N. educational arm UNESCO said in a report. Niger, Chad, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ethiopia are among those which are way off target.

Three quarters of countries have also failed to reach the target of halving illiteracy, UNESCO research showed.