My friend and fellow blogger Lenore Skeanzy, whose wonderful blog is Free Range Kids, has been quoting Mark Twain on the risks of riding trains in 1871. It’s fascinating and entertaining reading.

Twain was talking about the low statistical probability of being killed in a train wreck, though at the time conventional wisdom within the country was that train travel should be avoided as unsafe. Twain’s point was that despite the risk, the literal chances of being hurt or killed in a train wreck were very low.

Today, we know that your chances of being killed in an airline crash are statistically less than a car crash. Still more people fear flying than driving. This is in part because when we drive we are in more control and feel that that shields us. As much as we might understand physics and engineering, part of our brains has not evolved enough to accept that hurtling through the sky, six miles above the ground in a metal tube is even possible—let alone safe. Of course, there’s risk, but for most people who fly, it is acceptable risk. If planes fell out of the sky every day, it would be a different story. I once sat next to a mechanical engineer on a flight out of Denver who was absolutely panicked about flying. Even he knew his fear didn’t make sense, but it was just that: an irrational fear.

Now, fear is not always bad. It’s our built-in early warning system. The problem is that it gets ugly and unmanageable where fear meets ego. In other words, parents who read about terrible tragedies about children instantly project themselves into it. As a result, kids are being raised to be afraid of their environments, cautious about anything they don’t know and, in too many cases, risk averse. We have gone from a country that relied on its communities and the people within them to provide support, context and stability to isolated pockets of individuals fearful of anyone and anything we don’t know.

I was recently at an event with many people I didn’t know personally, but who were all there for the same reason and under the same organization. One would think that the presumption of safety within this group would apply. Instead, when a 5-year-old girl walked over to me to proudly show me the art project she’d made, her mother, having looked away for a moment, raced over, grabbed her daughter and told her she was “very bad” for talking to people she didn’t know, and instructed me not to talk to her child. Not surprisingly, her daughter looked like she was on the brink of tears. This drama played out over about 90 seconds, and I wasn’t even an active participant. In fact, I was irrelevant, and I never said a word. It was the mother’s fear that drove the drama, and it overwhelmed her judgment and the facts.

Sadly, “drama” is the operative word here, and I sat there wondering what this lovely little girl’s experience was going to be as she grew up if this was her daily experience. If every unknown situation is catastrophic and dangerous, how will this little girl learn to make distinctions between situations for herself when mom isn’t on the scene?

Children need age-appropriate risk at all stages of their lives. How else do they know what they’re capable of? It’s a huge risk to pull oneself up and start walking. It’s a risk to go to nursery school and suddenly be with other kids. It’s a risk to ride a bike, or a skateboard. It’s a risk to take the SATs. Any activity, any choice where the outcome is unknown is a risk. And risks are life threatening to a greater or lesser degree. Teaching children to take appropriate risks is how we help them to grow. And, most importantly they need to fail. I love watching kids skateboard because, with no parental authority around, they know they won’t hit each trick, but I love the process as failure ultimately leads to success, and success can become mastery. Children need this process.

Of course common sense applies. But shutting ourselves into egocentric cocoons of fear without acknowledging reality is not the answer. Every success has its genesis in one thing: a calculated risk. Striking the balance between rationality and risk is one of the most valuable gifts we can give our kids.

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It’s getting harder and harder for facts to be heard in the high-wattage emotional arguments that accompany every issue and pervade the media. From tea parties to taxes to Tebow’s ads, there isn’t an issue that isn’t met with a storm of opinion and outrage from all quarters.

Mostly that’s the noise of the zeitgeist, and there’s nothing one can do about it but roll one’s eyes. The problem is, science is boring. Doctors and scientists rarely scream or rant or have a picturesque history as Playboy models and comediennes of questionable taste. That’s what makes “good TV,” as they say in the business.

But there is one current issue where paying attention to science must trump the entertainment value of “controversy.” No, I’m not talking about lead paint, though that’s had its clowns of emotionalism too. I’m talking about immunizations.

The British publication The Lancet last week retracted its report on immunizations that showed a link between immunizations and autism. This follows years of scientific data that showed this link didn’t exist.

However, a celebrity culture grew up around this issue, led by Jenny McCarthy who postulated that her own son was a case study that validated the issue. McCarthy has now received scathing rebukes from a variety of sources, one linked here.

Autism is a heart-wrenching and frustrating disease. There is autism in my family. We will never know for sure the cause of it. And therein lies the frustration. There is nothing and no one to blame. One has to soldier on, dealing with the reality and fighting for the best care possible for those affected.

The recent rise in the diagnosis of autism is upsetting. Could there be environmental factors that influence it? We don’t know. But what was once at best a questionable study has now been refuted. That hasn’t stopped the emotion mongers. The internet is awash with saying that the retraction was motivated by the large pharmaceutical companies, and organizations that have built businesses on this, notably McCarthy’s, which is advertising supported, are backpedaling and offering no scientific substantiation for their positions. Instead, the general consensus of the opposition is that this is a “conspiracy.” These organizations are driven to maintain. McCarthy’s site is covered with advertising; this is no public service. After you read about autism, you can go shopping. That’s truly unnerving.

There is nothing you can do about what’s out there. Anyone with a keyboard and a Web browser can publish online—including me. Still, I called pediatricians and other doctors in the past week to find out what their position was on this issue. Several expressed frustration at dealing with parents who, armed only with an opinion, fought them on vaccinations for their children. To a person their position on vaccinations has remained unchanged: Vaccinations are necessary for kids and good for the population as a whole. There are no proven links between vaccination and autism. There is, however, too much data on the negative impact of skipping vaccinations.

The purpose here is not to give medical advice. If you have children who are due for vaccinations, speak with your doctor. Educate yourself about the situation, separate from all the posturing and emotional noise. I get a kick out of watching Entertainment Tonight, but I don’t plan my health strategy based on what I see there. Your parents may remember when Robert Young famously promoted products saying, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Yes, a credulous public was actually more likely to take medical advice from an actor and a fictional doctor than their own MDs. But that’s the job of advertising: to manipulate you to an emotional reaction that will prompt you to buy, completely bypassing the part of your brain that can make informed decisions. It works again and again, or advertisers wouldn’t spend billions of dollars every year to do it.

When you’re choosing a car, a lip gloss or a snack food, a little emotional manipulation is more or less harmless. When what you’re playing with is your children’s health—and a public health issue—emotion has no place.

If you’re dealing with autism in your family or your circle of acquaintance, this is very difficult. It changes families, crushes expectations and reshapes your life in ways you haven’t imagined. Having a focus for that, a definable enemy, can make it appear as if you have a little more control or understanding of the situation. Yes, the search will continue for both a cause and a prevention of autism. Families will still be challenged by it, and while emotion may be cathartic of comforting, in the long run it’s science that will provide the answers.

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Boys are freaking out about their bodies. As a parent or caregiver, you may be aware of how conscious girls are about their weight and appearance, but how about the boys? A recent article in the New York Times about boys and grooming describes the increasing number of products sold to boys. What’s remarkable is how many of these boys cite “confidence” as a reason to douse themselves in cheap cologne. The wonderfully quirky ABC show “Modern Family” has an 11-year-old character who frequently bolsters his ego through liberal application of aftershave.

I’m not so worried about this, and I’d rather that the junior high school halls smell like the fragrance aisle at CVS than a locker room. This is a current fad, driven, as usual, by aggressive marketing that plays on the insecurities of this target audience.

What I am concerned about are the drugs, supplements and drastic diets that many of these boys are putting themselves through to achieve results that may not be possible. I have spoken with a 7-year-old who was distraught because he didn’t have a 6-pack. He doesn’t know that he hasn’t matured enough to have one yet. All he sees are images and feels the frustration that he can’t be like the images he’s bombarded with on TV.

Over the past several years as I’ve interviewed kids and coaches, I’ve also found that boys are much more likely to be secretive about what they’re doing. Girls are, too, particularly in the early stages of anorexia when they are starting to binge and purge. Boys, however, are very likely to hide things like steroid use, which has grown every year among high school students according to The Association Against Steroid Abuse.

The risks are huge in any of these extreme measures. Perhaps, though, the most important one for parents to understand is that their sons and the boys in their lives feel pressured to achieve results that are not physically possible at their ages. You can’t look like a 25-year-old bodybuilder at 15, no matter how many drugs or supplements you take.

Parents and caregivers can’t do anything about the societal pressure facing boys. In a world where a good physique seems a ticket to fame as with “The Situation” on “Jersey Shore,” it’s natural that insecure kids will want to achieve that—and that they won’t tell you.

So, what to do? Here are several tips from doctors, trainers and coaches:

• Diet. Every doctor I’ve spoken to says that at the end of the day, the way to achieve an athletic, healthy body, is to have the calories expended be equal or greater to calories taken in. Educate yourself and your kids about diet and how it affects the body. Number one doctor recommendation: eliminate all soda.
• Learn. One thing common to personal trainers and athletes is an intimate knowledge of how the body works and what’s best for it. This will help avoid injuries and build a lifetime base of health.
• Emphasize Process. Even “The Situation” didn’t build his abs/identity in 20 minutes three times a week. Fitness is a lifelong, daily commitment, but doctors and trainers consistently say “health first.”
• Get Real. Some male cover models will go without water for two days before a photo shoot to look more sculpted. Not a good idea, say coaches. Plus, it sets up an unrealistic expectation. No two bodies will ever react the same way to an exercise of diet regimen. We’re all prisoners of our genetics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t strive to be your personal best.
• Wait. Girls are getting cosmetic surgery for their “Sweet 16” presents. Not a lot as a percentage of the population but enough to trigger the “eeewwwwww” response. Teen boys are also asking for liposuction. “Don’t,” say doctors. No one should undergo procedures until their bodies are mature. Tell your kids that Heidi Montag is creepy. Discuss.
• Indulge. If you’re following these tips and, most importantly, are watching and talking with your kids, there’s no harm done in the liberal application of body spray. It will wear off by the time they get home from school. Try to remember whatever it was that was fashionable for us when we were in school that made our own parents shudder.

Health and well-being come first; that’s your job. You can marvel at the marketing savvy of the people at Old Spice who made your grandfather’s boring aftershave hip for today’s kids later.

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If you’ve got teens, or even pre-teens in the house, it’s hard not to ignore the reality show “Jersey Shore” now on MTV. Kathy Griffin mentioned it on CNN New Year’s Eve with Anderson Cooper, who claimed to know nothing about the show. Though typically late to the party, the New York Times has become aware of the show’s popularity and its potential impact on the culture.

I became aware of the show when a group of 12-year-old girls were talking about it at an extended family gathering in early December. I was a little taken aback about the language and lifestyle they were discussing, so of course I tuned in.

Yes, these characters are laughable, cartoons of reality. Like so much of the TV of this genre, we know that it is provoked and edited to be as sensational as possible. We’re supposed to loathe these people and look down on them, and the producers have no qualms about showing these young people in the worst possible light—trumpeting ignorance, narcissism and sexuality in about as degrading a way as possible. And it sells, or it wouldn’t be on.

Now I’m no prude, and I believe in freedom of the media. If MTV wants to put that on the air, then by all means they have a right to do so. We can’t stop them, and I wouldn’t want to.

However, it does point out one of the relatively recent challenges of parenting and raising kids in the rapidly evolving media marketplace—playing gatekeeper on a daily or even hourly basis. Because kids have so many different channels to watch, online destinations to surf and access 24/7, it can be a full time job just to monitor what kids are watching. Yet it’s an important one. As parents and caregivers, we can’t control what’s on TV, but we can control the context in which the kids in our lives perceive the material.

Limiting screen time is good. Parental controls on computers are good. Keeping TVs and computers in public areas of the home is good. But at the end of the day, simply banning or preventing potentially objectionable material will only work for so long. Shows and web sites you might ban will inevitably be part of the conversation in your kids’ peer groups. And don’t make the mistake one parent did, thinking that in forbidding her 12-year-old to watch “Gossip Girl,” she was being protected. This young lady knew every plot and designer name. She got if from her friends and saw it at their houses. She simply didn’t tell her mom.

While a steady diet of “Jersey Shore” or most reality shows could make you worry for the future of the human race if it doesn’t bore you to death with its sameness and predictability first, the best idea is not to ban it but discuss it. Watch it with your kids, if they’ll let you, or record it and watch it later. It can be a great teaching tool. It’s not just that you can let your kids know how ridiculous it is for someone to give themselves a nickname like “The Situation” or talk about themselves in the third person; it’s that you can listen to your kids and get their responses to this. In fact, listening, particularly with Tweens and young teens is a good habit to get into. This is one time when teaching can go both ways.

You may discover, as I did with my 12-year-old friends, that they think the kids of “Jersey Shore” are worse than I did. While adults look back and are saying, “How could anyone be like that?” Young people tend to look forward, and say, “I would never want to be like that.” It actually kind of scared them.

Good.

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By Chris Byrne (Follow me on twitter)

Last Sunday night, I was in Chicago, and Michigan Avenue was lined with people there to watch a parade—and participate in the “official” opening of Chicago’s Shopping season.

For the rest of the nation, that begins the Friday after Thanksgiving—or so-called “Black Friday.” While it would be fun to say the name comes from my mood trying to navigate stores on one of the most crowded shopping days of the year, the real derivation of the term comes from financials. The Friday after Thanksgiving was traditionally the day that retailers went from being in the red to profitable—or in the black.

If you’re breathing, you can’t miss all the hype this year. Stores opening extra early (Toys “R” Us is opening at midnight.) and all the hype about “door buster” specials. It’s no surprise that everyone is a little hopped up about this. It’s been a dismal year for retailers, and shoppers who have held back all year are in a mood to buy.

But do you have to be out in a cold parking lot the day after the holiday? To me, the notion of getting through a holiday and then leaping into shopping is horrific. The odds of me getting one of the 50 deeply discounted TVs or appliances or computers or toys are so low that it’s not worth it. I start getting jumpy just thinking about it. That, however, is just me.

I’ve been surveying shoppers about their Black Friday plans both in person and online, and the views are pretty much evenly split. For every person like me who hates battling for sales (though I will be visiting stores that day in LA to see how toy sales are going), there are people for whom Black Friday is a family tradition. They anticipate the fun of getting up early and waiting in the cold. For them, it’s like a sporting event. They thrive on the crowds and the energy. As one woman told me, “I’ve done most of my shopping, but the holiday doesn’t really start for me till I feel the excitement of being in the stores. I wouldn’t be the first to posit that shopping can induce a drug-like state.

There are deals to be found, to be sure, and those deals will not be going to me, but I’m happy for the other people who will get them. We all pay in different ways. I’ll pay a few dollars more for things because I want to avoid the crunch. Others will pay with their time and energy to try to score the items they want. Happily, we both win. When choices are involved, people usually pay the prices they want to pay.

My sense, though, is that deals will be going on all season. Right now Amazon and Wal-Mart are engaged in a tremendous price war, which can only be good news for shoppers as all retailers compete for the estimated $437.6 billion that will be spent this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. So, it’s possible that we all may save a bit.

This is definitely a live-and-let-live situation. I don’t get the people who love being up at 3:00 a.m. any more than they can understand how I could miss the fun. From my perspective, we both win.

Have a wonderful holiday—just the way you like it.

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By Chris Byrne (Follow me on twitter)

Now you may wonder what in heaven’s name Kate Moss and her comments on eating have to do with toys and play, but stay with me on this one.

Moss is being pilloried for saying, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” in an interview. The outrage patrol, which jumps on everything to leverage publicity, has taken her comments out of context and attacked her for promoting anorexia. Of course, they did. As I repeatedly say, we’re outraged all the time over everything. Is anyone else getting exhausted by all this vitriol?

Moss was commenting on how she personally stays thin. Her publicists say the comments were taken out of context, and for once they’re right. The papers say that Moss is idolized by teens. Really, every teen and tween I’ve talked to lately is swooning over “New Moon.” A waspish model barely registers on their radar.

However, let’s take Moss’s comment apart. Moss is dependent on keeping her figure for her work, and one of the ways she does that is to remind herself of the consequences of eating certain foods. She didn’t say, “Starve yourselves into a fashionable shape.”

Yet when I look at obese and inactive families and young people lined up at McDonald’s in airports (where I am a lot lately) and carrying away trays loaded with shakes, burgers, fries and more, I’m concerned. When I read that costs of obesity are going to skyrocket, I can’t help but think that Moss, who is advocating conscious eating, may have a point.

Let’s face it, being overweight has serious health consequences, particularly for kids, which I don’t need to go into here. The way to control weight is reduced intake of calories balanced by increased expenditure of calories. Eat less. Move more. It’s not brain surgery.

For kids that means absolutely reducing what is eaten and be more active. Watch diet. Eliminate soda. Limit sugar and processed foods. And get out and play. I have yet to meet or interview any kid who has gotten their weight under control who doesn’t feel better about themselves or life. Kate Moss may have said things to make news, that’s what celebrities do, but it does feel better to be healthy.

That’s the goal of a new program from the NFL. NFL Play 60 program is designed to get kids, up, active and healthier. It’s an inspiring initiative, and full details on the Play 60 Challenge are here.

Many of us remember the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and attempts later by Arnold Schwarzenegger to get kids up and playing and to make physical fitness a cultural value. It’s sad that we’ve lost that. Hopefully, an entity as big and admired as the NFL can make some progress restoring physical fitness as something that’s part of our lives. The impact on the culture would be profound.

We all know that riding bikes, playing pick up ball, just plain running around all count. We have to make that happen, or we will inevitably pay the price in the end.

What’s ironic in the Kate Moss flap is that the outrage that makes headlines is always ginned up to allow people to reinforce their positions and avoid making any kind of change. The number of kids who will become fashion models is statistically non-existent. The number of kids who should be taught that being healthy feels better than subsisting on inactivity and a terrible diet is, well, all of them.

Let’s teach kids responsible eating, being active—and let them see for themselves how good that feels.

As for me personally, knowing I’ve avoided the 730 calories and 9 grams of fat in a 16-ounce fast food shake (more than 1/3 of the calories I should have in a day) feels a lot better than the soon-forgotten shake and the few minutes it took to consume it. Now, I’m not advocating an ascetic lifestyle. Occasional treats are fine. Occasional treats, however, don’t make kids fat.

So, let’s rephrase for Kate because she’s not getting a chance to: Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.

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By Christopher Byrne (Follow me on Twitter)

I have been haunted, delighted, mesmerized and just plain thinking about Where The Wild Things Are since I saw this amazing movie a couple of weeks ago. However, I’m not going to review it here. Our own Cynthia Fuchs did a great job with that.

It needs to be seen because in our culture right now, there is so much pressure on kids to perform, to meet standards set by adults and to behave in specific ways. In everything kids do, the results are the key and very little attention is paid either to process or how children perceive the world. We have so hemmed kids in by structures (school and activities primarily) where there is an adult expert guiding the experiences, that many times a child who does not adapt to these and is behaving in a way that is natural to him or her is either seen as difficult, ill or worse. There is little room for kids to experience, fail, hurt, learn, grow, just be and find their own ways.

That’s why Max’s odyssey is so important for adults to see. It captures the chaotic and confusing world that children perceive and chronicles Max’s attempts to identify experience, understand his impact on the world, be able to perceive all of this and integrate it into his personality. Max is at turns, violent, compassionate, angry, sad and clueless about what is happening to him and what he is experiencing emotionally. And it is a magnificent rendering of how a child’s mind works in trying to make sense of what he perceives as chaos and locate himself as a separate individual within it all.

Moreover, since the movie works from Max’s point of view, we experience what he does in the way he does. This is foreign to most adults who may have forgotten what that experience was like. They may recall events and may have integrated the pains and joys of growing into a structure that is consistent with maturity, but to go into the mind of a child who is overwhelmed and confused and who as yet lacks the language or context to describe his experience is something we forget—as we should. Still, the movie captures the nonlinear perception of a child and the fluidity of an unformed, or still forming, personality in a way that is profoundly moving.

When he meets his Wild Things, Jungian archetypes that populate his world, Max naturally sets himself up as king because at that age, children are remarkably self-centered, and he has learned from his mother that power comes from being in charge, something he chafes at. However, over the course of his adventures, Max learns that absolute power is not something for which he is prepared, or that he even wants. He ultimately learns that as a human, he must exist within the context of a culture and a family and having faced down his fears and come to see the consequences of his actions, he ultimately learns that “it’s time to go home.”

As he leaves the land of the Wild Things, Max is suffused with a kind of joy and a kind of eagerness that comes from surviving trial and succeeding and having a new and more mature understanding of himself.

This is also classic children’s literature—a child separated from authority and protection (parents) must find his or her way, through testing and loss and failure and danger and find that he or she can survive. It is at that point that the child becomes an individual and can participate in his or her culture.

We have seen this a million times. It’s the center of Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Star Wars and any of thousands of stories you can think of.

It concerns me, however, that so much of children’s entertainment seems fearful of the darker sides of children’s experiences. They won’t go away, no matter how many clear happy endings are pumped out. The notion that “nothing bad can happen” only makes for tepid stories that bore children. Now, I’m not suggesting that we scare kids, nor am I suggesting that everyone will be as likely to read Dickens as a bedtime story for 7-year-olds as my mother did, but what fiction can do is provide vicarious experience, form new archetypes for kids and empower them to face and overcome their demons. They’ll be better adults because of it, and Where the Wild Things Are is a wonderful reminder that this process is a natural and necessary part of growing up.

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By Christopher Byrne (Follow me on Twitter)

This column was never intended to be political in nature. Yet, if we are going to raise our kids effectively, we need to instill in them both critical thinking and common sense. We have so little power over what happens outside our homes and our immediate spheres of influence, but what we can do is help our kids to deal with the world as they find it as rational, thinking adults. When we can bypass the emotionalism and focus on the facts, we make better choices.

Following a flood of worries and concerns about lead in toys, not to mention some media-hyped hysteria, Congress passed a bill then President Bush signed into law that severely limited lead content. On the surface, this is a good thing. Lead is a known toxin when it’s ingested in quantity over time. However, the fear of lead poisoning, fomented by recalls in 2007, was the triumph of emotion over science. Yes, the recalled toys violated the law and should have been recalled. It’s probably a good thing that there are more stringent controls on testing.

At the same time, there have never been any reports of lead poisoning as a result of playing with toys. Lead must be ingested or aspirated and get into the blood system to create any toxicity. Touching something with lead in it and touching the mouth or eyes will not transfer lead period. Otherwise the paint on your cell phone, the crystal you use, the flatware you pick up and any number of other daily encounters we have with lead would have poisoned us all by now. You are at greater risk from inhaling the lead in exhaust (yes, it’s there even in “lead free” gasoline), than by touching a toy.

Still, the passion to protect inspired all kinds of bloviating and sound bite production and it led to a law, which while well-intentioned adds costs to your mass produced toys (as much as 15 percent in the new testing environment) and severely straps artisans who make handmade toys. As described in The New York Times, the costs of testing risks putting many of these people out of business.

This is why we applaud the work of The Handmade Toy Alliance to modify the current legislation to allow testing of component materials rather than the finished toys. Though I take issue with the purple prose of the organization (In this day and age that seems inescapable in trying to be heard), they make many good points. This is admittedly a very small piece of the toy industry, but why should people lose their livelihood and consumers lose the choice of some wonderful products when science doesn’t support the legislation?

I would urge you to contact your Congressman (look them up here) and your Senators (look them up here) and support the amendment of this law. Despite the protestations of advocacy group Kids in Danger whose site combines good information on recalls with fear-mongering and inaccurate claims about safety, amending this law will not open the door to allowing manufacturers to create less stringent controls on lead. In fact, we should encourage Congress to exempt toys made with wood and beeswax, for instance, from the legislation. (And common sense would tell us that there’s no profit for a toy company to do anything that could even be perceived as harming children. No one makes money by injuring their consumers.)

The reality is that consumers of any products face more risk from product design flaws than lead. This is borne out by the recall numbers. More importantly, inattentive care and failing to follow assembly instructions cause more injuries than lead. That’s an easy stat because there are no lead-related poisonings of children from toys on record.

And yes, this includes books. How many children lick the pages of books printed before 1985 with ink that included lead? I have spent time with hundreds of children throughout my career, I’ve never seen or heard of one chowing down on “Goodnight Moon.”

There are many elements of the CPSIA law that are supportable. Greater diligence on testing, despite increased costs is good for both industry and consumers because it increases responsibility and confidence in quality. I also support the limitations on yard sales and second hand stores. I hate waste, and I have a collection of antique books myself (none of which I have ever felt compelled to taste), but with toys, the more prudent choice is buying new. You have the advantage of a warranty, and the toy has been tested to meet all current standards.

Getting the right balance of regulation and freedom takes time. That’s why our system allows laws to be amended. What began as an emotional response to a fearful episode can now be tempered by an understanding of science and the real level of threat and/or risk involved.

In the meantime, as parents and caregivers, we need to try to be less emotional and more rational and practice common sense.

Particularly at this time of year as kids are about to have a new infusion of playthings, it’s probably wise to revisit some of the perennial tips for toy safety:

• Make sure the toys are appropriate for the age of the child. Age gradings are for safety purposes.
• Know that anything will go in the mouth of children under 3.
• When there are older and younger children in the home, make sure that the younger ones can’t get the toys for the older children.
• Check toys regularly for signs of wear and remove or replace toys that are damaged.
• Don’t load up cribs with toys.
• Put toys away. The number one toy-related injury is still from people tripping over them.
• Read and follow all assembly instructions carefully.
• Supervise play.

When all of these work together in concert with sane and practical regulation, we actually have greater safety and control than any time in history. Sounds good to me.

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By Jim Silver (Follow me on twitter)

I always think about Super Heroes around Halloween because they tend to be the most popular costumes for boys. When I think of Super Heroes, I think of Batman, X-Men, Spiderman, Iron Man, Power Rangers, and Superman off the top of my head.

Now, I know this has been said before, but I am still fascinated on the fact that Superman is so different than every other Super Hero.

If you look at just about every Super Hero, they try to blend in society. In order to “save the world”, they transform and put on a Super Hero outfit. Superman is very different. Superman came to earth as a Super Hero and his disguise is being Clark Kent; a geek-like intellect, who is a klutz and stumbles through each day. Superman’s transformation is the opposite than every other Super Hero. Through Superman’s eyes, the best way to fit in society is to be Clark Kent.

This leads me to this thought: With every other Super Hero, the costumed character is the disguised point of interest. With Superman, the disguise is Clark Kent, the anti-hero. So Superman isn’t the costumed character, but Clark Kent is the transformed character.

Superman, not really a hero, but just himself. Think about it.

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