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4A Daily News – Tuesday, February 19, 2013 Vitality health & fitness Praise action to raise problem-solver By Mary MacVean Los Angeles Times (MCT) Parents who want to raise children who are good at solving problems — and who doesn't? — should watch how they hand out praise to their toddlers, researchers said Tuesday. Praising little ones for their efforts — rather than for being who they are — helped make them problem-solvers who think success results from hard work five years later, researchers at the University of Chicago and Stanford University said in the journal Child Development. That means a parent might say, "You worked really hard," rather than saying, "You are such a smart girl." The messages, the researchers said, have different effects — and they influence the way children view the potential for change when they grow older. Other studies have examined praise with older children, and in a laboratory setting, said Elizabeth Gunderson, who is now a psychology professor at Temple University but was at Chicago during the study. "This study suggests that improving the quality of parents' praise in the toddler years may help children develop the belief that people can change and that challenging tasks provide opportunities to learn," Gunderson said. The researchers videotaped 53 toddlers and their parents at their homes in the Chicago area. They found different kinds of praise on the tapes. (Praise, by the way, was just 3 percent of the overall utterances, the researchers said.) Five years later, they followed up with the children to check their attitudes toward challenging versus easy tasks, overcoming setbacks, and improving. "Process praise," or praising the effort, increases persistence, because it suggests that effort leads to success. Most of those praises were simple, such as "good job" or "good running," the researchers said. "Person praise," such as, "You are such a kind boy," makes the person perform less well on challenging tasks because he believes the effort won't change his ability. Five years later, the children completed two oral questionnaires that assessed their approach to challenges. The kids who were given more process praise could think of more strategies to overcome setbacks. The recipients of person praise, on the other hand, felt that their traits were not changeable. The study noted that the research did not establish a causal relationship between the praise and the later beliefs, and suggested that additional research focus on the impact of praise on actual behavior. One worrisome note, Gunderson said, was that boys got significantly more praise for their efforts than girls — even though the genders received the same amount of overall praise. And at the five-year mark, the boys were more likely to have positive approaches to challenges. "These results are cause for concern because they suggest that parents may be inadvertently creating the mindset among girls that traits are fixed, leading to decreased motivation and persistence in the face of challenges and setbacks," Gunderson said in a statement. Another study in the same journal also looked at the way parents treat siblings differently — not just boys or girls. It's probably not a surprise to anyone who has a sibling that parents don't treat all their children the same way. And that's sometimes a good thing, said researchers from McMaster University and the Universities of Toronto and Rochester. Children don't always have the same needs, they note. But differential parenting, as it's called, can hurt not just a child who receives negative treatment but all the children in the family. The researchers, who looked at almost 400 families, also found that the more "risks" the parents had, the more likely they'll treat the children more differentially. (Those risks included such things as depression, poverty, household chaos, level of maternal education.) "In families in which most of (the) resources are devoted to coping with economic stress, depression and/or marital conflict, parents may become less consciously or intentionally equitable and more driven by preferences or child characteristics in their childrearing efforts," the researchers wrote. The study included families with up to four children, with average ages of 2 to 5. Most previous studies looked at pairs of siblings. Information about the families was gathered both by observations in the homes and from the mothers. The more risk factors that were present, the greater range of the way children were treated. And when kids in a family were treated very differently, all the children in the family had more mental health problems, the researchers said. "In all likelihood, this occurred because differential parenting sets up a dynamic that is very divisive," Jennifer M. Jenkins, Atkinson chair of early child development and education at the University of Toronto, who led the team, said in a statement. Leaving leftovers in winter Ever wondered about leaving perishable food overnight in the car? I recently fielded this question from a colleague who had unwittingly left the previous night's leftovers in her Honda CR-V. Relax, I told her, the temperature in your car last night was pretty much the same as in your fridge. Refrigerators should be set to about 37 degrees and so this advice only holds true in the late fall, early spring and during unseasonably warm winter spells where the temperature hovers between 33 and 40 degrees, the FDA's recommended range. If you leave food outside and the temperature drops below freezing, the food will still be safe to eat, but the texture may suffer after it has thawed and been reheated. When the weather cooperates, I often keep dinner leftovers in the car on purpose — less chance that I'll forget to bring them to the office the next morning for my lunch. And every Thanksgiving I give thanks that we celebrate this holiday in late November, when the temperature is frequently in that cool, sweet spot. This means that instead of taking up your entire refrigerator, your turkey can sit (or brine) in the garage, which is also a fine place to chill wine and beer. It's easy to tell if your refrigerator is too cold — the juice will begin to freeze — but not so easy to know if it's too warm. Most refrigerator and freezer temperature control dials are calibrated by number (e.g. 1 to 5) or description (coldest to cool) but not by degrees Fahrenheit or centigrade. It's a good idea to buy a special thermometer (available for well under $10) to check that your refrigerator is humming along at about 37 degrees, and your freezer at about 0 degrees. It can really make a difference in how long your food stays fresh. Another thought: How safe is microwave-safe plastic? According to the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, some plastics, when heated, may release potentially harmful "plasticizers" into food. But the FDA "closely regulates plastic containers and materials that come into contact with food … requires that manufacturers test these containers and that those tests meet FDA standards and specifications." That's what the "microwave safe" label signifies. On Nutrition: To the heart of chocolate By Barbara Quinn The Monterey County Herald (MCT) So let's pop the question: Is chocolate good for us … or not? A team of researchers from Harvard School of Public Health looked at several research studies and said it this way: "A growing body of evidence suggests that the consumption of foods rich in polyphenolic compounds, particularly cocoa, may have cardioprotective effects." Translation: Cocoa contains a group of natural substances that may make our hearts happy. One group of these "polyphenolic compounds" (known collectively as "flavanols") HEARING AID SALE FREE Hearing Tests For Fitting Of Hearing Aids Only. 15 Days Only! Discount of $ Feb. 12th-27th Beltone True gives you benefits like no other hearing aid 1000 OFF show special promise in keeping arteries clear and flexible, say researchers. A bit of chocolate — especially the dark variety — may help lower blood pressure and slow down the process of heart disease. Oh joy! And there is more good news. While most saturated fat is considered "bad" because it raises the dangerous LDL cholesterol in our blood, the primary saturated fat that occurs naturally in chocolate is stearic acid — a "neutral" fat that does not tend to affect cholesterol levels. More recent studies have noted that cocoa contains constituents that may also help improve brain function A Pair of True 17 2526 Sister Mary Columba Dr., Red Bluff 530-529-1888 *$1000 off the list price of two digital aids. thing good in chocolate thusly: "We continue to uncover wide-ranging benefits of cocoa flavanols for health and longevity, and it looks like this trend will continue." I love that. ——— contains more cocoa than milk chocolate. And white chocolate may be full of empty promises since it contains no cocoa at all. Is there a daily "dose" of chocolate we can trust to keep our hearts beating? No one knows for sure and it's too early to set a daily minimum requirement for chocolate. Darn. Experts do say, however that chocolate has benefits that are "acute" as well as "chronic." That means we can get a health boost that is immediate as well as long-term when enjoy cocoa-rich chocolate. Harvard researcher and epidemiologist Eric Ding sums up our hunger to find some- Barbara Quinn is a registered dietitian and cer tified diabetes educator at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Email her at bquinn@chomp.org. Have a news tip? Call 527-2151, Ext. 112 redbluff.mercy.org www.redbluff.mercy.org 1/2 OFF Open Digital Hearing Aids Call Today for an Appointment! and lower our risk for "can't remember" diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's. But alas, these truths about chocolate are bittersweet, say experts. Cocoa powder — the nonfat part of the cocoa seed that contains the most beneficial substances — is also the most bitter-tasting. We may be wooed by sweet and creamy varieties, but they may not hold the best promise for our tender hearts. 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