Elmo with Glasses Sesame Street Junior Backpack – $16.95

Are you a nerd? Are you hoping your child will follow in your footsteps? You need the Elmo with Glasses Sesame Street Junior Backpack from the NeatoShop. This adorable toddler sized backpack is the perfect way to teach your mini-me that it’s hip to be square.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Schooltime fun!

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Unicorn Costume – $26.95

Do you dream of having your own rainbow pooping unicorn? Make your dream a reality this Halloween with the Unicorn Costume from the NeatoShop.  Just combine one rainbow pooping baby or toddler with this incredibly adorable Unicorn Costume and live out the fantasy for one glorious night.

If you can’t locate a rainbow pooping baby consider faking it with the Rainbow in My Room rainbow projector. See photo below.

Rainbow in My Room – $29.95

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Dress Up fun!

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PlasmaBike – $87.95

Are you looking for a cool set of wheels for your favorite toddler?  You need the PlasmaBike from the NeatoShop. This awesome self-balancing bike looks like something out of a science fiction movie.  Want to guess which one?

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Toys & Games!

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Rabbit Feet - $17.95

Are you still looking for the perfect Easter gift for your favorite 18-months to 3-year-old?  Well, look no further! You need the adorable Rabbit Feet slippers from the NeatoShop!

The Rabbit Feet appear both cute and menacing just like a typical toddler. Roar! Hop! Hop! Roar!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more crazy Footwear!

Lil’ Ballerina Backpack – $23.95

Are you looking for the perfect Easter gift for the little ballerina in your life? Check out the Lil’ Ballerina Backpack from the NeatoShop.

You want to know the best part about the Lil’ Ballerina Backpack from the NeatoShop?  It encourages that adorable child to carry her own stuff! Yippee!!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more adorable Bags and Backpacks!

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2011/03/22/lil-ballerina-backpack/feed/ 0 http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/chinese-daycare-toddler-chained-to-a-tree/ http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/chinese-daycare-toddler-chained-to-a-tree/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:37:55 +0000 Alex http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/chinese-daycare-toddler-chained-to-a-tree/ Rickshaw cyclist Chen Chuanliu can’t afford daycare so he has to think of a way to prevent his 2-year-old son from wandering off on his own when he has a fare.

His solution? Chain him up on a pole!

The rickshaw cyclist, from the Chinese capital Beijing, decided to put tot Lao Lu under lock and key after his four-year-old daughter Ling went missing last month.

Child snatching is rife in China where strict laws govern the size of families.

"My wife is ill and I can’t stop work. So I chain him to a pole when I have a fare. It seems harsh but it is better than losing him," said Chen.

The problem is that he’s probably training the kid to think like Houdini: Link

… the Twoddler, a tricked-out Fisher Price Activity Center with pictures of family members and friends attached and an Arduino board inside.

When a child presses a certain picture for a select amount of time, software captures sensor data from the activity center and selects and sends a predefined text related to that data.

For example, when Bobby plays with Mom’s picture for more than three minutes, a Twitter message will post to Bobby’s personal Twitter account saying, "@mommy_bobby Bobby misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening" (or as the messages get more refined and personalized: "@mommy_bobby Bobby is having a temper tantrum and wants mommy home now."

It even won at the 2009 Innovative and Creative Applications competition: Link | INCA Award 2009 – via Wired’s Gadget Lab

Amy Alkon of Advice Goddess Columns disagrees with Southwest’s apology. She wrote this op-ed at the Los Angeles Times on how parents with unruly kids are "stealing from the rest of us":

There is a notion, reflected in numerous blog comments about the incident, that other passengers should "just deal" and "give a kid a break." This notion is wrong. Parents like Root and others who selfishly force the rest of us to pay the cost of their choices in life aren’t just bothering us; they’re stealing from us. Most people don’t see it this way, because what they’re stealing isn’t a thing we can grab on to, like a wallet. They’re stealing our attention, our time and our peace of mind.

More and more, we’re all victims of these many small muggings every day. Our perp doesn’t wear a ski mask or carry a gun; he wears Dockers and shouts into his iPhone in the line behind us at Starbucks, streaming his dull life into our brains, never considering for a moment whether our attention belongs to him. These little acts of social thuggery are inconsequential in and of themselves, but they add up — wearing away at our patience and good nature and making our daily lives feel like one big wrestling smackdown. [...]

I know, I know — because I am not a parent I cannot possibly understand how hard it is to keep a child from acting out. Actually, that probably has more to do with the way I was raised — by parents I describe as loving fascists. As a child, I was convinced that I could flap my arms and fly, but the idea that I could ever be loud in a public place that wasn’t a playground simply did not exist for me.

I hear claims that some children are prone to tantrums no matter how exquisitely they are parented. If this describes your child, there’s a solution, and it isn’t plopping him in a crowded metal tube with hundreds of people who can’t escape his screams except by throwing themselves to their deaths at 30,000 feet.

What do you think? Was Amy right? Link

(Photo: Karen T. Borchers / Mercury News)

The longitudinal study of 1759 children, ranging in age from 5 months to 5 years, found that 15% of study participants had unduly high symptoms of depression and anxiety and that these children were more likely to have mothers with a history of depression. The study also found that difficult temperament at 5 months was the most important predictor of depression and anxiety in children.

“As early as the first year of life, there are indications that some children have more risks than others of developing high levels of depression and anxiety. We also found that these symptoms increase in frequency during the first 5 years of life,” one of the authors, Sylvana Côté, PhD, from the Université de Montréal in Quebec, told Medscape Psychiatry.

Link

When Sophie McInnes was born on September 16, 2006, doctors said that she’d be unable to walk for at least a year. Her father, Gavin McInnes, simply wouldn’t accept it as medical fact. Here’s the documentary Sophie Can Walk: Link [Funny or Die]

As suggested by VICE in a comment in John’s post Why Can’t Human Babies Walk?

The child was crying, which apparently greatly perturbed Matthews. "If you don’t shut that baby up I will shut her up for you," Stephens warned Matthews, according to a Gwinnett County Police Department report. Moments later, Stephens acted on his threat, slapping Paige "across the face approximately four or five times." Though the child "started crying and screaming" after being struck, Stephens told Matthews, "See, I told you I would shut her up."

Link – via BuzzFeed

Natalie went missing Tuesday evening while playing the game with her brother and sisters and the best efforts of neighbors, police and firefighters called by her frantic parents weren’t enough to turn up the tot.

The terrifying ordeal for her parents ended happily after more than an hour of scouring the neighborhood around the 10th Street mobile home park where the Jasmers live.

In the end, it was the family dog that flushed her out.

“Copper found her,” Natalie’s brother Kenny Findley said, crediting the mutt with discovering the tiny girl asleep inside a drawer underneath the washing machine in the family’s home.

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Little did they know that the two were having the time of their young lives playing Goldilocks gone bad, ransacking a sleeping neighbor’s home:

And while [Angie Lovorn] slept, the toddlers ransacked her cupboards, munching on Teddy Grahams, marshmallows and chips. [...]

“They even got on the top bunk," Lovorn said. "These items — stuffed animals — were on the top bunk."

From the looks of the house, the boys enjoyed their visit.

Link – Thanks Tiffany!

About 150 searchers spread out look for Nathaniel, who had managed to walk more than a mile away from his home, Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield said.

By 11 p.m., a Toldeo firefighter with a portable infrared scanner spotted a heat signal that turned out to be the boy.

"They think Stanley is what kept him going because it was obviously really cold last night," said Teafatiller. Nathaniel was found laying on the cold ground with Stanley snuggled next to him. During his adventure, the boy stripped off his pants and diaper and was found in only a t-shirt and socks.

Link – Thanks Tiffany!

Are you listening to me? Didn’t I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It’s cold out there…

So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that’s not how it works.

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.

"I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings," said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they’re just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different."

Link

Susan Goldin-Meadow and Meredith Rowe of University of Chicago have found a link between gesturing and improved vocabulary in toddlers.

We all know that toddlers will gesture long before they form words, such as raising their arms to be picked up.  Gesturing also appears to be a precursor to forming words. Even more interesting was the link between income disparity and vocabulary:

Higher-income parents did gesture more and, more importantly, their children on average produced 25 meanings in gesture during that 90-minute session, compared with an average of 13 among poorer children, they reported in the journal Science.

Then the researchers returned to test vocabulary comprehension at age 4 1/2. The poorer children scored worse, by about 24 points. Researchers blamed mostly socioeconomic status and parents’ speech, but said gesturing contributed, too.

It’s not just that richer parents gesture more, stressed Peggy McCardle of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the work.

“It’s that there’s a greater variety of types of gesture that would signal different types of meaning,” McCardle said. “It sure looks like the kids are learning that and it’s given them kind of a leg-up.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.