UPDATED: Today's top news stories for parents

Boys learn differently. That's something I'm just starting to sort out as a relatively new "school parent."

My first son is in Grade 1, so I've only been supervising homework and helping him prepare for spelling tests for just a few weeks. But already I have a pretty clear picture why the Toronto District School Board's new education director is introducing a raft of initiatives aimed at addressing the unique learning style of boys.

I very much underestimated the ants-in-pants factor, for one thing. He'll be doing a worksheet and will just randomly fall of the chair - likely because he's been leaning it so far in one direction or the other. "Boys thrive in environments that are hands-on and where there's opportunity to move around," says Chris Spence, an educator and former CFL-er who is now the TDSB's new education director.

Education reporters Louise Brown and Kris Rushowy have the whole story in, Schools plan calls for boys-only classes. Let us know what you think by commenting on this blog.

Other important news stories for today:

Where to get your H1N1 shot. Toronto Public Health has named 10 sites where flu vaccines will be available, in anticipation of starting the program in early November. It's worth taking a look now to find one on the list that's close to your home. It may be that individual family practices will not be administering the vaccine.

Michael Ignatieff makes daycare a key campaign plank. This is an interesting development in light of the Pascal Report on early learning that the Ontario government is now sitting on, apparently contemplating how to implement in part or whole. We have a whole page dedicated to Early Learning, so please check it out.

Exploited nannies win fee battle. Thanks to a Star investigation, legislation will be introduced today that makes it illegal for anyone to charge a fee to domestic workers hoping to find work in Ontario.

H1N1 turns up at turkey farm. The important thing for parents to note here is that this incident posed no risk to Ontario's food system. The turkey you had at Thanksgiving was fine, and you'd be perfectly safe - though not perfectly sane, perhaps! - if you choose to roast another one this weekend. These were breeder turkeys used for their eggs, and even if they weren't, such viruses would be killed during the cooking process.

Sperm donor passes on heart defect to 9 of his 24 children. Yes, I said 24. This story sheds new light on the need for rigorous screening of donors.

Fun diversions:

Halloween Guide

Researchers identify giant new spider species

Games

Today's top news stories for parents

It's no surprise that I'm getting a lot of questions from parents about swine flu these days. Whether or not you choose to vaccinate is a personal choice, but I'm urging parents to make informed decisions based on facts. Please take your advice from family doctors and public health authorities. I'm seeing all kinds of factually shaky and misguided emails and YouTube videos making the rounds in mommy circles, so it may be wise to consider the source.

Here are some news stories that may help you get informed:

Health reporter Theresa Boyle has compiled a list of common questions about swine flu.

Here's the latest on when swine flu vaccination is likely to begin.

This story contains information on the availability of adjuvant-free vaccine for pregnant women, and this one answers more questions regarding the vaccine and pregnancy.

In other news:

Food editor Jennifer Bain takes a critical look at the school cafeteria in a profile of a unique pilot project called the Good Food Cafe. Run by FoodShare, this place is whipping up yummy lunch choices and helping city kids make a real connection between what's grown in the field and what lands on the table.

In the latest in her series on the state of children's aid societies, Tanya Talaga takes a look at the sad state of Family and Children's services in Rainy River.

Fun diversions:

Michele Henry's hilarious blog admission of baby milestone jealousy

A Halloween craft you can make from those little cereal boxes

Our Halloween Guide

Please let me know if you think I've missed something that should be included in this list.

Children's Aid budget crunch

In York region alone, there are 500 children under the care of the local children's aid society. But nearly 90 staffers could be let go to accommodate a budget cut of $5.5 million.

Queen's Park reporter Tanya Talaga's story today, Budget cuts put children at risk, Ontario warned, outlines the complex funding problems facing the province's 53 children's aid societies.

There is plenty of finger-pointing and a lot of different numbers being thrown around. But this is the crux of it for me:

Marcelo Gomez-Wiuckstern, director of communications at the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, says fewer case workers means agencies will not be able to respond to high-risk child abuse allegations or be able to meet minimum standards of seeing children every month to assess their "safety and well-being."

We only need to recall the report of Irwin Elman, the province's child advocate, to understand why this is not acceptable. In 2007, 90 children and teenagers died while under the care of the Ontario's child protection system. Some died in accidents. Others killed themselves. Some were murdered.

Katelynn Sampson's case should serve as a good reminder. She was found dead in the apartment of her legal guardian in 2008, while supposedly under the care of the Native Child and Family Services of Toronto.

Yes, these two stories speak to the failings of the child protection system as much as to the vulnerability of these children. But surely kneecapping the agencies by cutting case workers is not the answer.

AXE to grind

Curious little story by Diana Zlomislic on the site today: It's about preteen boys getting into fights that involve spraying each other with Axe deodorant body spray.

One of my favourite lines: "Axe bodyspray is to boys today as hairspray was to girls in the '80s."

I guess the marketing of these bodysprays — a television commercial with bikini-clad women storming a beach in search of the guy who uses Axe, for example — have caught on with the preteen crowd. This enthusiasm for smelling good, coupled with the typical preteen love of hijinks, has led to kids spraying each other with the stuff at school. (Tragically, one 12-year-old boy died in Britain last year after inhaling too much.)

So is this penchant for smelling good something new? (I seem to recall my brother overdoing it with Ralph Lauren "Polo" cologne in the late '80s: "But by the time I get down to the bus stop, I can't smell it!") And do we prefer this zest for sexy scents to a more laissez-faire approach to personal hygiene that has often accompanied this awkward stage between child and teen?

Also notable:

We've got a story on Madonna's African adoption, which puts it in a context of increased adoptions from that part of the world, where thousands of children are orphaned because of AIDS. Do you suspect Madonna jumped the queue?

Octuplet babies and other curiosities

If you've been following the news at all, you've probably heard a little bit about the California mom with new octuplet babies and six other kids at home. It's been interesting to read people's reactions to this family. The story we have today contrasts this case to other families with higher-order multiples, calling it a PR calamity. Our weekend feature probed the ethical quandaries that surround this sort of mega-high-risk pregnancy.

It seems that while most users who comment on this story find it an odd choice to have eight babies at once when you already have six children at home, there is a furious debate going on among commenters. Many are concerned with the high cost of bearing and delivering the children. Others wonder what fertility specialist implanted that many embryos, if that was in fact the case, or gave her such a high dose of follicle-stimulating drugs, if that was the approach taken.

Naturally, whether or not the woman should have opted to reduce the number of embryos is a hot-button ethical issue. The woman's religion could have made that out of the question for her.

Many others are wondering who is going to foot the bill for raising the children. And one thing is for certain, the public just has not received this California mom with the warm-heartedness usually afforded this sort of brood. Because of that, there just hasn't - apparently - been the windfall of mini-vans, diapers, cribs, formula and other baby supplies.

I'd like to throw it out there that while we may question her sanity - especially those of us getting our butts kicked by having just one or two children, myself included - we can't really know her circumstances or her motivations. At least not until she does a tell-all interview with People magazine or the like.

What do you think?

OTHER MATTERS...

At the risk of making any kind of crass comparison to these eight babies and other parts of the animal world, I wanted to point out a couple of great things on our sites to share with your kids. I am working from home today because one of my children has croup (this oddly Victorian virus - with its conjured notions of mustard plasters and blood-letting - has visited our house twice in two months) and I'm planning to show Cameron this star.com story on a prehistoric snake the size of a T-rex. For the fan of all things outer space, there's also this amazing story about Humber students communicating with the International Space Station. And finally, Google Earth has expanded tremendously, allowing users to dive under the ocean and much, much more. Enjoy!

Is your pantry ready for lice?

A good friend of mine wrote to me this morning in some horror that her daughter has contracted a bit of a case of head lice. (I guess, really, there is no "bit of a case of lice." That would be like being a little bit pregnant. If your kid has them you have to go through the whole comb-out hassle whether you've spotted one of the unholy little organisms or dozens and dozens of their wretched nits.)

My friend is actually not that squeamish about de-lousing, but she is surprised her daughter contracted lice given that their fairly cautious approach to coat-room hat swaps and the like.

The real tragedy here is that in order to do the comb-out, my foodie friend had to do use the fancy, kibbutz-grown and pressed olive oil that she carted - at some expense to her carry-on capacity and spine - back from a recent trip to Israel. Just think of the salads that will go undressed because of this unfortunate lack of planning.

The moral of this story is not to fret too much about toques and scarves. There's virtually no hope of preventing your child from getting lice when they're hunched over the sand table in February. Just be prepared and have some really, really unvirginal olive oil - the kind pressed in Haliburton instead of Haifa, for instance -  on hand to deal when it's your turn.

Smoking on playgrounds

Today we have a story on the City of Toronto's extension of the smoking bylaws to include a ban on smoking on children's playgrounds.

It will now be prohibited to smoke within nine metres of playgrounds, wading pools and splash pads.

My colleague expressed surprise that this ban wasn't already in place. Wasn't this obvious, she asked? Sadly, I guess it is not, and when you consider the tenor of the comments, you get a glimpse at the kind of uproar that this causes among people who are fixated with the city's "useless bylaws," and with having their freedoms infringed upon.

It's the same sort of debate we saw last week when the ban on smoking in cars when kids are present came into effect.

I think most parents will certainly agree that it's best to protect children from second-hand smoke. My father died two months ago today from metastasized lung cancer. He never smoked a day in his life. We don't know for sure how he got the disease, but in the kitchen where he grew up the air was nearly blue from both his parents' cigarette smoke.

Maybe better to fall on the paternalistic side if it can save some otherwise perfectly healthy people from succumbing to second-hand smoke?

I think so.

Classified material

Lying in bed the other night, I was mentally composing a Craigslist ad for my 16-month-old son:

"V. attractive male toddler, excellent health, to good home. Best offer."

or

"Cute, blond baby boy, 16 mo., as-is condition."

A perfect storm of emerging molars, a wretched cold/cough, over-tiredness and toddler determination have been conspiring to keep us up around the clock, and the other night we were in the eye of the hurricane. Nothing was right in Alister's world. He cried at bedtime, he woke numerous times throughout the night, he rose at 5:30 a.m. Grumpy.

He wasn't sick enough to be lethargic, luckily. However, that meant his normal zeal for scaling things and moving furniture was intact, only he was a whining, chair-throwing brute instead of his normal, adventurous but good-natured self.

Yesterday morning, with my mom on her way from Victoria, I feared that I'd have a toddler scaling my leg her entire visit. But happily, he went to her right away, and turned on the Grandma charm with his little baby-talk stories, dancing and smiles.

Maybe the tooth is through. Maybe his congestion is clearing. Maybe, just maybe, the sleep gods will start to smile upon us.

High school daze

It was interesting to read the comments on Kristin Rushowy's weekend story about a Toronto high school that plans to shift its start time to 10 a.m. beginning in September 2009.

The pilot project is a response to research that shows that teens experience a circadian shift that means they fall asleep at adult-like bedtimes (quite a bit later, in many cases) but still require child-like amounts of sleep. Couple this with a socio-economic reality that plenty of teens hold part-time jobs in the evening, and it all adds up to bleary eyes and poor attention in the early morning hours.

Response ranged from supportive to indignant. Some felt this was a practical solution that acknowledges advances in what we know about teen brain physiology, not to mention, just plain good sense. Others suggested that giving in to the lazy ways of teens, so to speak, would worsen the work-ethic problems that some feel are already endemic among Gen-Y workers. One even went as far as to say that graduates from Eastern Commerce would go on his "do not hire" list.

It could be argued that resisting this change on the grounds of "we've always done it this way" is akin to holding on to hazing rituals or 24-hour shifts for medical residents, even though both are acknowledged as unwise. I'm looking forward to seeing what teachers, students - and ultimately - test results, will have to say about the program's success. Stay tuned!

My little Houdini

I have a 14-month-old who doesn't want to do anything that isn't a risk to life or property.

Set him down beside his stroller, Alister takes off giggling down the block. Leave the gate unlatched while you run upstairs to raid the change dish, he's teetering on the landing. Turn your back for a second, and he's on a step stool — his arm extended to the farthest edge of his reach and one foot half off the edge of the stool — endeavouring to retrieve a framed poster from the wall.

He breaks wine glasses. He has opened the oven door (yes, we need a lock for the stove!). He has no regard for traffic. He cares barely a whit for toys, but loves electric toothbrushes, remote controls and our cordless phone (if he pushes the right buttons, a nice lady comes on the line and says, "You must dial one or zero before the number..."). He has ruined one Blackberry and very nearly threw another in the bathtub.

He climbs onto the back of chairs, steps down, claps for himself, repeats. Sometimes he falls off things. Hard-earned lesson that keeps him on the floor for a while, you might think? No, he just uses the experience to hone is object-scaling skills.

This would all be fine, apart from the fact that we have other things to do than to stand within an arm's reach of our toddler. We joke that we need an extra adult in the house just to spot Alister in his quest for precipices and toxic substances.

Sometimes we allow him to make messes and waste things (or electricity — the fridge door is just full of interesting bottles and jars!) just because it will occupy him for, say, one minute. My older child, Cameron, wanted me to read him Batman book the other day, so we sat on a chair in the kitchen, where I could ensure that Alister didn't touch the stove where dinner was cooking. Alister attacked the Saran wrap drawer, pulling apart two boxes of sandwich bags and about 10 feet of wax paper. But that wax paper got me to the part where Batman escorted Joker to the squad car, so it seemed worth it. When Alister was unusually quiet in our ensuite bathroom this morning, my investigation revealed the tiny cost of peace.  "This uninterrupted dressing time was brought to you by... a couple of wasted Chapsticks," I told to my husband.

I know that this is a story that will sound familiar to any parent of an active baby or toddler. And I try to remind myself that it sucks to be two feet tall (imagine, a whole world of knee caps and counters you can't see over). Still, as a busy mom of two with not a lot of extra patience, it's sometimes hard for me to parent him in a way that conceals the fact that I think he's a huge pain in the bum (a cute, lovable pain in the bum, but a pain in the bum, nonetheless).

On the flip side, his adventurous also means he can play with his brother, who's four years older. His physical nature helps him bridge the age gap. He's tough enough to wrestle bigger kids and loves the mayhem of a crazy playdate.

And he's my last baby, and that's what I remind myself when a bowl of Cheerios is hurtling past my head.