The other day my husband turned to me and said with a sigh, “Life has been too easy for us.  It can’t possibly go on like this forever.”  Pardon?  Certainly, I’d agree that Charles Dickens would have been hard-pressed to find literary inspiration from our lives, but too easy?  Memories of nauseous pregnancies, sleepless nights, colicky babies, and whining toddlers from the past eight years raced across my mind like an episode of Super Nanny.  Those days when a pot of coffee beat back my exhaustion and drops of adult conversation preserved my sanity were not recalled as vividly for my husband who escaped to a muted office cubicle every day as I was P.T. Barnum at home.  Too easy?  I didn’t think so.

 

He was, as it turned out, referring specifically to our family finances after reading an article on the ballooning costs of a university education which we would one day be doling out for our three future surgeons… engineers? … or, um, general arts graduates.  Suspecting that he was trying to get off the hook for starting our next renovation project, I stated he was ridiculous and stomped off in a huff.  But in reality, I knew he was right.  In our twelve years of marriage, we have always been able to fully pay our bills on time and buy whatever we need (or really, really want) without much scrimping and saving.  However, we’ve also abstained from many luxuries that are simply beyond our budgetary grasp such as hiring a much needed housecleaner, going on island vacations, and paying retail at the Gap.  Perhaps it was time to trim our spending to ensure our future savings would cover that most important of goals – one that we both equally endorsed – our children’s post-secondary education.

 

As with most married couples, money has been the cause of many battles, yet it has also been a catalyst for peaceful negotiation and the melding of often divergent goals.  It has, in essence, created a system of checks and balances that ensure our hard-earned dollars don’t easily escape the crease in our family wallet.  Our “I do” to wedded bliss was the first of a string of “I do’s” in the give and take of conjugal mediation – with finance being a particularly popular subject.

“Do you mind if I buy another pair of stiletto boots?”  “I do.”

“Do you think I’m crazy to ask if I can go golfing with the guys next weekend?”  “I do.”

“Do you think we should replace our old barbecue?”  “I do.”

“With a $4000 Weber?”  “I don’t.”

 

Perhaps the ease in our lives (remember, we’re just talking money here) has less to do with luck and more to do with the need for consensus in all our financial decisions.  Indeed, a study on how marriage impacts wealth, by Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University, indicates that couples who marry and – this is important – stay married, tend to accumulate more wealth than their single or divorced counterparts.  Married individuals experienced a 16% annual increase in wealth compared to the average single or divorced individual who scraped out an annual increase of 8% and 14%, respectively.  So, clearly my husband can expect this “easy” life to continue “till death do us part.”  However, if we should part before that, all bets are off.  According to the same survey, divorce can cripple a person’s wealth – reducing it by 77% when compared to a single person (while staying married almost doubles one’s wealth.) 

 

It’s a good thing I love roller coaster rides, because when I look back at the past twelve years I can‚Äôt believe all the dips, lifts, and surprise turns we‚Äôve experienced together ‚Äì some fantastic, others not so great.¬† And I can only imagine what amazing twists we will face over the next decade, but it‚Äôs good to know one thing is for certain ‚Äì our wealth will very likely keep going up.

Too many Canadian kids are fat.  This is a fact.  Over the past few years, newspapers and health advocates have decried the rising obesity rates, but it’s not headline news today.  As Canadians have come to accept this weighty truth and various organizations and governments scramble to find solutions, it’s hardly surprising that finger pointing has begun.  Who is to blame for this epidemic of chunkiness?  The list of culprits is exhausting and their culpability impossible to define – from the nutritionists in Michael Pollan’s bestseller In Defense of Food (Fat bad!  Carbohydrates good!) to parenting experts that bemoan Mommy’s use of the word “no” – the blame game will very likely find few winners.  A recent report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, however, shows both the food and media industries are strong contenders.

 

According to the report, $1.6 billion was spent in 2006 by 44 major food and beverage marketers to promote their goodies to kids aged 2 to 17 years old.  For children aged 2 to 11 years, a total of $229 million was invested in breakfast cereals alone – while the amount spent on fruits and vegetables was $8.4 million.  Is it any wonder then, that kids are especially vocal about their preferences in the cereal aisle of the grocery store?  Take a teen to the local Loblaws, and it’s more likely to be the soda shelves that invigorate his taste buds.  That’s because the marketing strategy shifts toward carbonated beverages for 12 to 17 year olds where $472.2 million was invested in making sure your kid begs for Red Bull rather than V-8.  In that same age category, fruits and vegetables received a measly $6.2 million to promote their not so hip qualities.

 

The report also chastises the media for bombarding children and teens with messages and images that promote unhealthy eating habits through television advertising, the internet, and movie tie-ins.  In the reported year, food and beverage products were tied to about 80 movies, television shows, and animated characters that appeal to children.  It specifically cites the use of characters from Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean to sell fatty food products.  According to a National Post article by John Hiscock, Dr. Martin Schiff, weight-loss expert and best-selling author of The Thin Connection, goes a step further in blaming Hollywood for North America’s gluttonous habits.  He is now part of a health campaign that urges the movie industry to add a new rating – “O” for Obesity.  According to Schiff, shows such as Sex in the City where skinny, beautiful women constantly eat yet never gain weight are setting an unhealthy example for thousands of children (as opposed to the promiscuous sex and shallow lifestyles?)  While this proposal is a noble effort to curb the overeating that has gripped our youngest generation, it’s not likely that an industry that profits from gratuitous violence and lurid sex scenes is going to omit all-you-can-eat buffet scenes from their movies.  Furthermore, parents busy censoring their children from lewd language, nudity and blood spilling are not about to whisper “cover your eyes” when some chubby kid eats a twinkie on the silver screen. 

 

A battle against America’s corporations to focus their energies less on junk food and more on healthy eating is, quite frankly, fruitless.  Although the report concedes that some of the largest food and beverage companies have taken “important steps to encourage better nutrition and fitness among the nation’s children” by limiting their advertising to foods that meet certain nutritional standards, if the “standards” are met by injecting a few vitamins into a sugar-laden gummy, children and parents are not much better off.   Maybe advertisers will bear some of the responsibility for North America’s unhealthy eating habits, and maybe they won’t.  Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain, all this finger wagging and strongly worded criticisms will do little to shrink the enlarged girth of a ten-year-old.  Regular trips to the farmer’s market, less time in front of the television, and a firm and well-practiced “No” will shed pounds and transform bad eating habits long before anyone sees an ad touting the funky pink treat that dances in your mouth and spreads cool antioxidants to your finger tips called … Watermelon!

Throw a ball to a boy and he’ll probably fire it back and launch a game into action. Hand that same boy a book and he’ll probably fling it aside for a more compelling activity.

Sound like a cliche? Maybe not.

The 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of fourth graders found girls outperformed boys in all 40 countries, including Canada. Recent studies in Canada and the U.S. have shown similar results. While numerous school initiatives across Canada try to close this gap, Jo-Anne Coughlin, a teacher with more than 20 years of experience and Early Literacy consultant from 2001 to 2006, insists parents are always the first educators. Sitting comfortably in a pint-sized chair in her grade 2 classroom, she offers insights into the challenges facing parents with the familiarity of a seasoned mother, she has five (now grown up) sons.

Giving a boy choice in what he reads will help feed his literary appetite. Ms. Coughlin says parents can help by tuning into their son’s interests and providing a range of literature that fuels his inquisitiveness. But don’t focus on storybooks alone; boys are likely to seek out less conventional reading material, such as trading cards, magazines, and reference books. That’s okay, concedes Ms. Coughlin, these sources build literacy skills and are a valuable part of a boy’s scholastic backpack.
She recommends fact-based reference books to hook reluctant readers,”They enjoy the bite-size pieces of it, photographs, captions, headings, and they have choice in terms of where to begin and end in reading.”
Publishers are responding to the unique needs of boys by offering factionals, books that combine fact and fiction, such as the Magic Treehouse Series which embeds historical and geographical facts within an adventure story about two children who travel to different times and places.

Boys like to know their purpose for reading, says Ms. Coughlin, and they’re less likely than girls to read for sheer pleasure.

They dig through their source for useful morsels of information that they can store in their pocket of knowledge for later use. Boys want to engage others in their reading experience by sharing the ideas and facts they’ve discovered. A publication that includes instructions on how to make a craft or perform an experiment gives him a purpose for reading and provides an opportunity to share the experience with a friend. Ms Coughlin encourages mothers and fathers to find books that provide them opportunities to work creatively together.

Parents should set aside time to read, without distractions like TV and video games for both themselves and their child.  Mom and Dad model the values they wish to instil in their children when they read in their presence. But don’t underestimate the importance of time together, engrossed in a book or discussing the latest read because, says Ms. Coughlin, “Anything a parent does one on one with a child and takes seriously, makes him think it matters to them, so it matters to me.”