Infant

I’ve heard this question many times in the decades I’ve been practicing dentistry. The short answer is that good dental hygiene matters just as much — if not more so — for baby teeth than for adult teeth. The reason is that our teeth affect many areas of development, from …

I have 16 photos of my 3-year-old son on what would be his final day of life. In 14 of them, he is wearing a life jacket or puddle jumper, time-stamped photos of my boy, grinning proudly as we unknowingly marched toward the end. Our precious Levi, drowned in June …

Most of us ponder the meaning of life. In all my trips around the sun, I found that this last one gave me the most insight into the simplest way to find the meaning of life. It all started with some conversations I had with my parents and my in-laws. They’re …

Skin cancer is the #1 diagnosed cancer in the world, and we are all layering ourselves and our children in sunscreen these days trying to prevent them from this same future. And it’s all over the internet-the newest studies are showing the active ingredients in sunscreen are absorbed at high levels! …

It’s hard to believe another summer break has come to a close for most of our kids, yet here it is. Though my own children are now in college, I will never forget the days of school supply lists and figuring out what they would be wearing on their first days …

Kids are a hilarious, exceptional, a miracle. I give my 8-month old a leaf and she’s happy for about two hours to just wave it around in front of her face. She is growing every minute, every second, and watching her change and develop is so unbelievably exciting. All of …

I didn’t learn to swim until I was 11 years old. I remember being frustrated when I went to the pool with my friends and I couldn’t hang out with them in the deep end as easily. There was one time, I remember trying to play “lifeguard” with my cousin and …

It’s that time of year again, when we all start hitting the pools, and the lifeguard in me starts fuming when I see kids bobbing around in the pool in water wings, life vests and suits with flotation inserts. Why? As a former swim coach, instructor, pool manager, and lifeguard, …

I like to imagine “balance” as this peaceful state of mind. It’s this feeling that everything is occurring in symbiotic coexistence. My life, my work, my personal happiness, it’s all at this serene, cue ocean wave white sound noises. That’s what balance is, right? It’s the perfect (by definition) system, …

Co–sleeping?! (*Gasp!*) This is pretty much a bad word in the medical community: No one wants to talk about it, as it is so frowned upon and stigmatized — and not without reason, which I’ll get to. And I know parents often don’t tell me if they are doing this, because they don’t …