Little girls have always loved to pretend to play "mommy" to pretend babies. When it comes to baby dolls, the more lifelike the better, right? As children, we adored our faux infants, especially the ones who could crawl, bawl, go potty and drink from that mysterious magic draining milk bottle. When Chatty Cathy appeared on the scene and could talk, she became a must-have toy. But how much realism is too much? Some would say Spanish manufacturer Berjun Toys has pushed the boundaries just a little too far with its Breast Milk Baby, the world’s first nursing doll. Marketed to toddlers, the $89 …

Pop-Tarts for breakfast? Big Macs for dinner? Virtual water skiing at workout time? If this is your brood’s summer schedule, you may be heading for a child well-being check – especially if Junior is swelling at the waistline. A couple of high-level health policy wonks are saying foster care may be better than letting kids live with parents who allow them to become so overweight they are candidates for bariatric surgery, since the long-term effects of the operation on children have yet to be understood. The controversial opinion, published in this month’s edition of the Journal of the American…

Do kids really need to know about writing tight sentences, breaking ideas into paragraphs, verb-subject agreement and using the active tense, or are these things just more of those silly educational extravagances, like art and recess? Illinois lawmakers have set their sights on writing tests as one way to trim nearly $2.5 million from the state budget. Essentially, they'd delete writing tests from the standardized exams that Illinois high school juniors take every spring, just as they dropped composition exams for elementary and middle school students last year. Writing experts admit tests …

Help your little brother. Share your toys. Do your homework and make good grades so you can get into a good college. Give back to your community: Volunteer for a good cause. Be a team player. Be a good sport. Do your civic duty and vote. We moms and dads are always fretting about the things we need to teach our kids and brooding over the best ways to make our lessons stick. But when was the last time you stopped to ponder the things you’ve learned from your youngsters? My little girl is in college now. Looking back, I can name a few life lessons she helped me figure out. Don’t sweat the small…

Aah, that mysterious golden trail of the sparkler making shapes in the summer night air… The charcoal magic of the black pill that bubbles into a hissing snake… The enchanting pastel cloud of smoke bomb … Charming as this iconic page of our Independence Day memory book may be, personal fireworks can be a real dud. That sparkler we’re handing our preschooler is burning at more than 1,000 degrees. "Fireworks are dangerous and unpredictable, especially in the hands of amateurs," said Judy Comoletti, with the National Fire Prevention Association. "The few seconds of pleasure those fireworks may …

Peanuts can be deadly. Milk can make kids sick. A new study by Chicago researchers shows that one in 13 U.S. children – twice the number thought until now – is allergic to foods that in earlier generations were household staples. Do the math and you’re talking nearly 6 million kids. It means two kids in your children’s classroom will have to be very careful to steer clear of certain edibles, such as peanut butter cookies and milk shakes. Worse, about 40 percent of them will have severe reactions to things like shellfish, giving credence to the notion that food allergies are not just annoying…

Just in time for Dad’s Day, a new Chicago research report shows today’s kids get more father face time than ever before. A comprehensive study sponsored by The Goddard School for Early Childhood Development (http://www.goddardschool.com) shows that fathers are more involved in their children’s lives as decision-makers and caregivers than ever before. The Goddard School, with the guidance of advisor Dr. Kyle D. Pruett, an internationally known child psychiatrist and author, sponsored the research to get an update about the changing dynamics of Dadhood. “While there’s an abundance of research …

Kathy Witterick and David Stocker had no idea they were sending a “life-changing” message when they sent out e-mailed birth announcement in which they said they weren’t going to divulge the gender of their new baby. "We decided not to share Storm's sex for now -- a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime," they wrote in the e-mail just after their third child’s birth last New Year’s Eve. The name was a perfect fit. The Canadian couple said they never would have foreseen the tempest their decision to keep the baby’s …

If there's a day that kids anticipate as fervently as Christmas, it's the last day of school. That warm day in June, when students pack away pens and notebooks for the summer, ushers in the proverbial promised land of endless weeks of sleeping in, chilling out and knocking around. But some believe the long, lazy days of summer vacation might be a practice best relegated to the history books. There is a clamor in support of year-round schools that seems to grow louder every year. The arguments are well known: eliminating the traditional 10-week summer break in favor of shorter breaks …

The courts say it’s OK for boys to wear earrings to school.  The cops say earrings don’t have anything to do with gangs.  And if you think wearing an earring is a silent way of signaling your sexual preferences, you're showing your age. Plainfield, Bolingbrook and Romeoville high schools have given the green light to guys who want to sport a stud or hoop in the earlobe. But the Joliet Township High School Board is not convinced and recently voted to retain its ban on male ear jewelry. A quick Google search shows guys have been piercing their ears since just about the beginning of time. …

Plainfield mom Sherry Schneider still has a few years to save her pennies to pay for her daughter’s first prom dress. But she’s worrying about it already. “I was shocked at how much the parents have to pay,” she said. “The dresses are running an average of $400 and up, plus shoes, jewelry, makeup, hairdo…” I never paid $400 for a prom dress. Still, I remember feeling that pang of fleeting youth when I forked over $200 for my daughter’s senior prom dress, the last one I would buy her. Lovingly, I remember them all – the first, an azure fairy princess poof dress that we bought in a fit of …

Chocolate milk is alive and well in Plainfield schools. While some school districts around the country are expelling the popular, sugar-laden dairy delight as a bad guy in the battle against childhood obesity, chocolate milk remains the choice of nearly 85 percent of Plainfield school students of all ages, officials say.   That’s higher than the national figure, which shows that a little more than 70 percent of the milk poured in school cafeterias is flavored, according to the Milk Processor Education Program. “Students across all grade levels choose chocolate over white milk,” reports Eloise…

The age-old debate over how parents should discipline their children took a new twist last week when a "20/20" investigative report put the spotlight on a minister who advocates the spanking babies who cry too much. Philip Caminiti, pastor of the Aleitheia Bible Church in Wisconsin, which is part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches, is facing child abuse charges for practicing what he preaches. He maintains that babies should be beaten with wooden rods if they are "emotional, grumpy, or crying” and that bruising and redness are the marks of a meaningful paddling, the ABC report …

Parents across the country were outraged last week when they learned trendy fashion retailer Abercrombie and Fitch was pushing a push-up bikini top for the 'tween set. The popular purveyor of over-priced garments for kids and teens may have gone too far when this spring it introduced its new “Ashley push-up triangle bikini,” a padded bikini top marketed to girls between the ages of 7 and 14. My question is, at 7, what is there to push up? It makes me think of my little girl, now in college, pleading to wear lipstick when she was in third grade. And who didn’t play at being a grown-up by …

What shall we name our new baby boy?  Should we paint his nursery green or blue?  Oh, and should we get him circumcised?  That's a question that's getting more and more debate these days. Today, we take on a Moms Council matter where Dad’s feedback will be particularly welcome and worthwhile.  Whether or not to circumcise a newborn boy used to be a non-issue. Until the past couple of decades, most parents removed the foreskin from a baby’s penis as a matter of course.  But there is a growing school of thought that the practice is not only unnecessary, but cruel and unusual.  A recent review …

What do you do for fun?  What makes you feel happy?  What do you worry about most?  What stresses you out?  If your tween or teen draws a blank on questions like these that challenge them to explore their feelings, they may be emotionally anorexic. Emotional anorexia is a long-lasting state of numbed feelings, lack of empathy and aversion to emotion. Emotional anorexics withdraw socially, undervaluing relationships and filling in free time with things they can do alone.  People who work with adolescents find emotional anorexia is a growing phenomenon -- a side effect of technology that …

OK, parents, time to weigh in. Here is this week's "Moms Talk" topic. Tell us what you think in the comment box below.   Do your kids use the "R" word?  Did they hear it from you first?  We’re talking about the word “retarded." We’ve all said it when referring to our intelligence-challenged workmates or a family member who just can’t see the brilliance of our point of view or about someone who can't see the urgency of doing things the way they need to be done.  In fact, cultures all around the world have their own version of the "R" word that they use when they mean “dumb.” For families …

All you have to do is force your kids to "friend" you. Then you’ll know everything that’s going on in their social network, right? Wrong. It’s a story as old as parenting itself. As fast as Mom and Dad can make rules, kids come up with ways around them.  One easy way to divert the folks is a social media name change.  All they have to do is go to “Account Settings” and make a slick identity edit. Spell a name backwards or use a middle name or a nickname and, voila, they're invisible to the 'rents again.   Kids who are photo and video buffs think they can beat the game game by blurring photos …

Moms Talk is a new Plainfield Patch feature that is part of our initiative to reach out to moms and families. We invite you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families here in town. Each week, we ask out Moms Council -- just average moms in Plainfield -- to give us a topic for discussion.   Michelle Waldorf’s eighth-grade daughter was looking forward to sleeping a little bit longer next year when she begins attending Plainfield East High School.  Turns out she won't be getting that extra shut-eye after all. Deficit-reducing measures recently …

Welcome to the debut of our Moms Council, in which average people living in Plainfield set the agenda for parenting-related topics that we'll toss out for public discussion. This week's topic is a surprise. Our moms say there's still lots of discussion in their circles about Ashley Blumenshine, the 27-year-old physical education and dance teacher who gave up her position at Plainfield North High School after she was arrested in January for allegedly having sex with a student in a parked car outside a Plainfield department store. Questions are still swirling about the scandal. Our moms say …