Good Kids, Bad Habits: 21st Century Parents Get Help Raising Healthy Kids

Good Kids, Bad Habits; The Real Age Guide to Raising Healthy Children
First Edition
Jennifer Trachtenberg, M. D.
Collins an Imprint of HarperCollins
319 pages

When my son was born, my mother presented me with baby care gifts, lots of advice and a copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock's classic tome on raising children, Dr. Spock's Baby & Childcare. The advice and the gifts received quite a bit of use, Dr. Spock's book-not so much. It came in handy when I had a health emergency to address, like a fever or the flu, but it didn't hold my attention as a modern parent;some passages read more like a class lecture than friendly advice.

Pediatrician, Dr. Jennifer Trachtenberg's Good Kids, Bad Habits covers much of the same territory and does so in a readable and accessible manner. She addresses the nutritional, hygienic and emotional needs of children from 7 months to 17 years. She accomplishes this while acknowledging that there are many familiar problems, such as little Johnny refusing to eat anything green, as well as very new challenges, like the internet, facing parents as they strive to raise healthy children.

The book opens with a foreword by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., frequent guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show and coauthors of YOU: The Owner's Manual. In it, they offer some anecdotal suggestions on how parenting healthy kids, hopefully, becomes a shared responsibility between parent and child. They also provide some general guidelines to help parents implement the information and advice given by Dr. Trachtenberg in their usual informative and matter of fact style.

Good Kids, Bad Habits then proceeds smoothly to asking parents to assess the health of their children by taking the RealAge Healthy Kids Test. Following the test parents are shown how to end bad habits and build good ones by applying Dr. Trachtenberg's 4I formula for developing the healthy habits that will make healthy kids:

Identify the habit, which needs to be learned or changed
Inform your child about why this habit needs to be developed for good health.
Instruct; help your child learn and become competent in the habit.
Instill; help your child keep their healthy habits with reminders and support.

Each chapter presents health guidelines based on age as well as sidebars filled with statistics to educate parents and caregivers. Other highlighted sections, give suggestions to help readers apply the information and strategies they are learning as they work to improve their children's overall health. Dr. Trachtenberg includes recipe ideas and helpful hints which take today's busy lifestyles as well as children's access to information and technology into consideration. By including these features in her book, she acknowledges the special considerations which must be given to integrating healthy habits into children's daily lives in our current era. The book ends with an opportunity to check-in. Parents complete an additional assessment to determine what level of progress their children and they have made following the RealAge program. It also provides a description of possible illnesses, their symptoms and an extensive reference section which includes online resources as well as further reading selections.

This book is a quick read. It should be a welcome addition to parents' childcare libraries. Parents can plan to keep a copy Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare,a thorough child rearing reference book,on hand and add Good Kids, Bad Habits to their shelves to help their kids be their healthiest in the 21st century.