If you find the ingredients contain “dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15“, throw them out – you’re poisoning your kids, perhaps even giving them cancer.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has unsuccessfully been urging the world’s largest health care company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals – dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde – from Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products.

Johnson & Johnson said it is reducing or gradually phasing out the chemicals, but did not respond directly to the campaign’s demands.

Now the group is ratcheting up the pressure and urging consumers to boycott Johnson & Johnson baby products until the company agrees to remove the chemicals from its baby products sold around the world.
“Johnson & Johnson clearly can make safer baby shampoo in all the markets around the world, but it’s not doing it,” said Lisa Archer, director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “It’s clearly a double standard, something they can easily fix.”

Archer said her group has met with Johnson & Johnson representatives three times since spring 2009, and is disappointed the company is not making safer baby shampoo and other products in the U.S. when it does elsewhere.
[HuffPo]

And there’s the rub, right? They don’t use it in all their shampoos, they know it’s harmful and yet they use it here.

Oh, don’t think just because there’s some french printing on your bottle you’re safe, the shampoo sold here is made in the US. And it’s not just limited to J&J products, a colleague found the ingredients in a grocery store brand of shampoo too.

Which begs the question, who do you blame: the government or the manufacturer?

According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press, one of the suspect chemicals, quaternium-15, is a preservative that kills bacteria by releasing formaldehyde. Formaldehyde, used as a disinfectant and embalming fluid, was declared a known human carcinogen this past June by the U.S. National Toxicology Program. Formaldehyde also is a skin, eye and respiratory irritant.

Quaternium-15 is still an ingredient on Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo sold in the U.S., Canada, China, Indonesia and Australia, but the campaign’s research this summer found it’s not in the same product sold in at least eight other countries, from the U.K. and Denmark to Japan and South Africa.

The second chemical, 1,4-dioxane, is considered a likely carcinogen. It’s a byproduct of a process for making chemicals more soluble and gentler on the skin.

The campaign’s May 2009 report, called “No More Toxic Tub,” stated that studies by an independent laboratory it hired, Analytical Sciences LLC of Petaluma, Calif., found that 1,4-dioxane was contained in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, Oatmeal Baby Wash, Moisture Care Baby Wash and Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Creamy Wash.
[HuffPo]

Canada was the first country in the world to declare BPA a toxic substance even while companies were still defending it’s use.

That chemical is being blamed for increased rates of prostate cancer and early onset puberty in girls.

My wife is livid tonight. When the BPA scandal broke, we were thorough in our removal of the products from our home and demanded refunds from retailers. Now we find out just as we were poisoning our kids each time we fed them, we were doing it every night when we bathed them. Little by little, we’ve been exposing our kids to harmful chemicals that don’t need to be in there.

The bottle manufacturers relented and are changing their production methods, just as Johnson and Johnson has finally relented to the pressure.

Still, isn’t it a great feeling to know you’ve been poisoning your kids their entire lives?

There are some variants in that list, but basically he’s a brown food kid. He doesnt do pizza, he won’t do sauce. His mild palate is good news in that he’s never had pop (doesnt want to try it) and doesn’t like candy (other than chocolate). He’ll eat carrots and cucumbers, but that’s about as far as the vegetable tasting goes.

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO

In the spring, experts were saying the best way was to lead by example.
The report said children will eat vegetables if they see their parents eating them AND enjoying them.

If a child sees you eating vegetables with a smile on your face, they’ll be more likely to want to eat them. But if it looks like you’re choking them down, they’ll have even less interest in eating them.

STICK IT TO THEM

A new study out of University College London tested different methods to get kids to eat vegetables, and found that one worked MUCH better than the others: Bribing your kids with STICKERS.

The researchers found that when parents gave small stickers to three-and-four-year-old kids as rewards for eating TINY pieces of vegetables, over a few weeks, the kids actually started liking those vegetables.

How much is tiny? About the size of a child’s pinky fingernail. Baby steps.

Three months later, the kids who got stickers were more likely to be willing to eat more of their vegetables than kids in other test groups.

WHAT DOESNT WORK

The researchers also found that rewarding kids with food didn’t work. As in, “eat your broccoli and you’ll get ice cream.” Because it made the kids compare vegetables to dessert, and vegetables are ALWAYS going to lose that battle.

And giving your kids praise didn’t work either. As in, “Wow! You’re a great vegetable taster!” Because kids just don’t care about achieving higher status in the realm of vegetable tasting.

Stickers, on the other hand, are awesome.

Go ahead, chase a 3 year old around a playground and try to tell me that’s not a P90X level challenge.

With the playground covered in white and the temps near freezing, your usual workout needs to be modified.

Here’s a way you can try to trim it down this winter, with another DadCAMP Workout: Hill Repeats.

It’s simple:

Find a toboggan hill. Push the kid down the hill. Listen to him scream. Beg him to climb back up the hill. Run down the hill to get your kid. Pull him in the sled back up the hill. Repeat for 45 minutes or until one of the kids has to go potty.

Wander your playroom and look in the bins at what your kids already have.

My mother saved a bunch from when I was a kid for Nana’s toybox. The Fisher Price town, airport and circus are classics. Timeless. My boys eat them up when they go there.

The Toy Hall of Fame has inducted 46 toys since it started in 1998.

Barbie, Easy Bake Oven, Checkers, Ball, Playing Cards, Kite, Lego, Teddy Bear and Marbles are all in the hall.

No Tickle Me Elmo. No Transformers.

The 2011 Toy Hall of Fame inductees included blanket, dollhouse and Hot Wheels.

Geekdad recently came up with a list of the Top 5 Toys of All Time.

5. Dirt
4. Cardboard Tube
3. String
2. Box
1. Stick

While you’re flipping through the Toys R Us catalog and going over your child’s wish list, think about this: when armed with imagination a child is unstoppable.

There are dozens of others that I flip through at the library, get four pages in at nighttime and then just start ad libbing because the story is so terrible.

There is, however, an author I will gladly engage an “again” wish from kids every time they ask; Oliver Jeffers.

If you don’t recognize his name, you’ll easily remember his art work.

How To Catch A Star is the story of a boy who longs to own a star and eventually catches one. The Way Back Home is about the boy and his alien friend co-operating to get off the moon. Up and Down and our favorite, Lost and Found, follow the story of the boy and his best friend, a penguin.

In 2008, the simple tale of the boy and the penguin he found riding to the South Pole and back, Lost and Found, was turned into an animated special.

His pictures tell incredible stories and the words on the page are few. Jeffers‘ imagination is stunning. His story telling is simple. His artwork is subtle.

Simply, his books don’t suck.

What are your favorite (and least favorite) bedtime books?

This Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe is perhaps the simplest recipe ever invented that kids will love making with you. 3 ingredients with complete instructions small enough to fit in a tweet.

1 cup of peanut butter
1/2 cup of sugar
1 egg

Mix them together. Roll into balls and put them on a cookie sheet. Flatten with a fork. Bake for 20 minutes at 325.

That’s it.

Some tips:

We had fun by placing mini chocolate chips on top of the cookies before they went in the oven.

Don’t leave them in longer than 20 minutes.

Take them off the cookie sheet as soon as the get out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack. That sheet is still hot and if you leave them to cool on that, the bottoms of the cookies will burn.

A big glass of milk is mandatory.

I play with the iPhone at the park.  I will excuse myself at dinner to go to the bathroom (check my messages).  I am guilty of being plugged in to the borg when I should be experiencing the wonder of my children.

So I write the articles about unplugging as an exercise.  The technological addiction is passing on to my children.  My youngest, 22-month old Charlie gets excited by the slightest glimpse of an iPad, iPhone or portable video player.  He will swipe and swap between games and videos all day – if you let him.

So I write articles about turning off the power to try and bring the practice to my own life.

Lately the mantra has moved to bedtime stories as the new book, Goodnight iPad, has been woven into our night night routine.

Author David Milgram wrote the parody book under the pen name Ann Droyd. The classic original, Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown in 1947 gets a swift update as the quiet fireplace and toys are replaced by a raucous family that would rather play games, watch tv and read eBooks than go to bed.

Each device is eventually unplugged by a frustrated mother who curls up at the end with a simple flashlight and a copy of the classic before bed.

As with each night time tome, my sons and I play a game of “I Spy” with the illustrations in the book.  They quickly identify all the technology and gaming gadgets while simpler things, like night stands and fireplaces go unnoticed.

It’s time to unplug and get back to the simpler things, I keep reminding myself. Hopefully this book will help remind my kids too.

Goodnight iPad will be released on October 27, but is available for pre-order now.

When something in on his plate that he doesn’t like, he distinctly informs us “I didnt order this.”

Noodles must be plain. Period.

So my wife and I dont get the luxury of being sneaky chefs and stuffing the sauce with cauliflower, zucchini and vegetables to help him get his fill. But I wonder, is this the right thing to be doing anyway?

We’ve been given the books by Missy Chase Lapine and Jessica Seinfeld, but they sit unopened on the shelf. I read the blog recipes, like this one this morning giving tips to get bananas into ice cream, but I wonder – are we doing our kids any favours by being “sneaky chefs”?

By sneaking the good in with the bad are we just encouraging the craving for the bad instead of nurturing an appreciation for the good?

You may know how to get cauliflower into macaroni and cheese, beets into chocolate cake and zucchini into spaghetti sauce – but that’s not how it’s done in the real world.

For now, we’re still trying the negotiations to get our son to broaden his palate, and it works – sometimes.

Are *you* a sneaky chef? What are your reasons?

Those books are great and have brought back great memories. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Caps For Sale and others have been fine trips down memory lane for me. Learning some new favorites, like those by Oliver Jeffers or the Skippyjon Jones series have been fun too. But this week a new night time book was brought into rotation – from our iPad.

I have a number of fun learning apps for my kids on the device, and a few books too, but The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore was not just something to leave them lying on the carpet messing with on their own, this was an entry into Bedtime Stories 2.0 that was to be shared by father and son.

The The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore iPad app (book) comes from an award winning animated short film of the same produced by Moonbot Studios.

Its a video game, its a movie, its a story.

These are the kinds of literary experiences our kids will grow up with. There’s the novelty of the page turn to break each interactive experience, but each step of the story lets the kids dive in and twirl a house, tape together a ripped image or make the books dance in the wind.

This kind of story experience is something that takes what lives in a child’s imagination and manifests it on the screen. Bedtime books will never be the same.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore – $4.99 in the App Store

You don't want to know what they saw.

Teens have sex.  It's true. We don't want to visualize it, we don't want to imagine it, but it happens.

It happens.  Teens are having sex and now parents are wanting to let them have sex in the home so they can control safety and promiscuity. 

It's just like the parents who will host the house parties for their kids, they're going to drink anyway, might as well do it in a safe environment.  Right?

I'm all for empowering kids with knowledge and being there to walk them through the tough decisions in life. I fully endorse parents letting kids on Facebook at an early age so that tech savvy kids can be raised.  My argument for that was "they're going to do it anyway, they might as well do it with you by their side."

But when it comes to the more titilating topics, like sex and drugs and booze, my constitution wavers.

My ex-wife's daughter was 14-18 when we were together.  I saw her grow from an awkward girl in oversized hoodies to hide her body into a designer bag loving teen who could never find shorts short enough or tank tops tight enough.  It was in grade 11 when she got her first serious boyfriend and my ex-wife would allow the boyfriend to sleep over.

It wasn't my choice, but it wasn't my say.  I can't fully describe what it's like to knock on your step-daughter's door on a saturday morning to invite a couple of teens downstairs for breakfast.

I'm 14 years away with having to deal with this scenario with my young boys now, and I'm guessing by 2025 this sort of permissive parenting will be widespread.

What's your take?  Are your teens having sleepovers?