Fundex Games has released an updated version of "Electronic Dream Phone," a popular 'tween and teen girls game introduced in the early '90s by Hasbro. The slumber-party game features a state-of-the-art phone, stylish new look and cell-phone features girls this age would expect, the makers say. When playing the game, girls make calls to a dream team of 24 teen boys, hoping, through the process of elimination, to find who has a crush on the girls. "Electronic Dream Phone" is sold exclusively at Justice stores.
Indoors and outdoors, youth athletes stay active year-round in competitive sports. For many of them, heel pain has become "just another part of the game."
The American College of Food and Ankle Surgeons advises that, when a child complains of heel pain, the cause should be diagnosed promptly because it might be a warning sign of a serious foot problem.
Dr. Karl Collins, a St. Louis-area foot and ankle surgeon, says heel pain occurs frequently in children ages 6 to 14 as their feet grow and the heel bone develops. As they become more active in sports, they increase their risk for growth-plate injuries and subsequent heel pain.
Collins cautions parents to be concerned if a child has pain in the back or bottom of the heel, limps, walks on the toes or seems to have difficulty participating in normal recreational activities. In most cases, mild or moderate pain can be treated successfully with shoe inserts to soften impact.
For more information or to find a foot and ankle surgeon, visit FootPhysicians.com .
Parenting is a tough job, but now parents have an online resource for navigating their children's early years. The new Web site ParentingCounts.org combines comprehensive research with a secure journal for recording children's development and for sharing milestones and achievements with friends and family.
The Parenting Counts Center provides research-based information from Talaris Institute about early child development, brain development and parenting in an easy-to-use format.
ParentingCounts.org provides parents with comprehensive, current parenting information. Parents can access the Parenting Counts Center for $19.99 per year, or they can try a free 30-day trial subscription and explore the world of Parenting Counts with no obligation.
Membership to the site includes:
• The Parenting Counts Developmental Timeline organized by age and typical child-development milestones in social and emotional development, language and communication, cognitive development and learning- and physical-development categories.
• A secure journal, which allows users to customize, create and share an online "baby book" for a child including milestones, photos and special memories.
• A private network of friends and family, which users create and monitor.
• Access to current research findings and tips about child development.
• A subscription to the Parenting Counts e-newsletter, e-mailed periodically throughout the year with hot topics and the latest research findings about early childhood development.
Economic reality and money problems might be cooling the enthusiasm of U.S. college students to study abroad, just two years after students' interest in foreign study was at an all-time high.
Four times as many students went abroad in the 2007-2008 academic year as 20 years ago, according to a survey of 985 schools released by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit advocacy group.
But almost 60 percent of the schools and study-abroad groups surveyed in early September by The Forum on Education Abroad report decreased enrollment from a year ago, since the global economic crisis.
Almost 200 million children in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and health problems due to poor nutrition in their early years, the United Nation's children's foundation UNICEF said. However, the percentage of children in Asia who have retarded growth fell to 30 percent last year from 44 percent in 1990, and in Africa to 34 percent from 38 percent over the same period, UNICEF said in a report.
Send parenting news to Coping With Kids in care of Rebecca Killian, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, D.L. Clark Building, 503 Martindale St., Pittsburgh, PA 15212; fax 412-320-7966; or e-mail rkillian@tribweb.com .
