How to buck the prolific negative, over-sexualized images advertisers are aiming at our daughters. Reality Check: This morning on the TODAY Show I shared how all the “too fast, too negative, too sexy, too soon” merchandising may impact our daughters and why parents should be up in arms. Here are highlights from that segment and [...]

Parenting alert: Websites tailored to young girls that encourage negative self-image, eating disorders and cold-blooded cruelty Research is showing a clear and troubling trend in the mental health of our daughters. Eating disorders, stress, depression, smoking, binge drinking, a peer creulty are steadily rising. Though the internet is certainly not the prime cause, it can [...]

Parenting advice to raise strong, secure girls from the inside out and counter those racy, raunchy “what you have to look like” type images that rob self-esteem These days it’s almost impossible to not read the diet of some pencil-slim celeb. Photos of them all to often leaving some nightclub (drink in hand) wearing some [...]

REALITY CHECK TIME: Bullying, depression, eating disorders, ADHD, stress, early puberty onset, plastic surgery and Botox are all on increase and in younger kids. Here is my pick of the top troubling child and teen trends, the research that shows why we better keep a closer eye on our kids, and what parents, educators and child-advocators [...]

Puberty Onset Four Years Earlier American Academy of Pediatrics: Over a decade ago, Marcia Herman-Giddes, a pediatrician and now professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, noticed many young girls in grades one to five were showing public hair and breast development,” In her words, “It seemed like there were too many, [...]