Parental Guidance marks one of those movies aimed at an oddly narrow demographic: grandparents.

Not their kids or their grandkids, a common marketing strategy to lure both ends of the age spectrum with time to kill over the holidays.

No, Guidance aims a sweet-if-silly bead squarely at the AARP-qualified generation. And while its senior stars do a terrific job capturing aging in a youth-crazed culture, Guidance drops the ball, in all departments, in its portrayal of anyone younger than 55.

Billy Crystal plays Artie Decker, a quick-witted minor league baseball announcer who dreams of broadc...

Discover the differences between a humidifier and vaporizer and why humidity can help with colds.

Every parent wants what’s best for their baby, and this is especially true when baby is sick.At some point, most parents have to make a decision about what type of humidifier to buy.At first, the task seems simple, but then the questions begin.What’s the difference between a humidifier and a vaporizer?How do these machines add moisture to the air?Which one is best for my child?Relax.The answers are here.
When a person has a cold or allergies, humidity helps alleviate the symptoms...

Having the family sit down together for dinner every night may make children more likely to eat their fruits and vegetables, researchers found.

Schoolchildren whose families ate dinner together every night ate 1.6 more servings of fruits and vegetables each day compared with those whose families never ate together (P<0.001), according to Meaghan Christian, of the University of Leeds School of Food Science and Nutrition in England, and colleagues.

In addition, parents who ate fruits and vegetables every day and who cut them up for their children had kids who ate more of them (P=0...

«Meningitis link to smoking in pregnancy: Cigarettes can treble child’s chance of developing the disease,» the Daily Mail reports.

The headlines follow the publication of a review that has looked at whether children exposed to secondhand smoke (passive smoking) could be at increased risk of meningococcal meningitis. Meningococcal meningitis (caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis) is the most common type of bacterial meningitis in the UK. If it progresses to a blood infection (septicaemia), the condition can be fatal.

The 18 studies included in the review found that children and adoles...

It is a nasty little habit that most parents try to dissuade their children from engaging in as early on in their childhood years as possible. But one particular piece of scientific research actually suggests that kids who eat their own boogers may end up building stronger immunity compared to their peers, and go on to live healthier, happier lives.

This is the somewhat unusual assessment made by Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, a professor and lung specialist out of Austria, whose research involving boogers and immunity led him to make this somewhat shocking claim. According to Dr...

How long could you live off the food you have in your home? A month? A week? A day? One mom says she could probably go for a whole year without grocery shopping! She keeps a well-stocked pantry, plus a food storage closet in the basement and plenty of frozen meat and vegetables besides. And it’s all just to help feed needy families along with her family.

It’s amazing what some people do with their space and resources! And after a disaster like Hurricane Sandy, I think we all started wondering how self-sufficient we’d be — and for how long — if we were caught in an emergency.

Growing up Morm...

‘Family meals aid five-a-day: Eating together at the table boosts children’s intake of fruit and vegetables,’ the Daily Mail reports.

The news is from a study that aimed to explore the influence that the home environment has upon a child’s fruit and vegetable intake, in particular parental attitudes to fruit and vegetables. The study included 2,383 primary school children from London who had food diaries completed for them at school and home over a single 24-hour period...

From his toy-cluttered Brooklyn apartment, the man in the red suit was making his list and checking it twice. But he made no distinction between naughty or nice: Every child on it would receive a gift from this Santa Claus.

For the children whose toys floated away during Superstorm Sandy, Michael Sciaraffo is playing the role of a real-life Saint Nick. Every afternoon and night, he stuffs his red sack to the brim with presents and heads out to storm-ravaged homes, personally delivering new toys to awestruck little kids whose play rooms were destroyed by floodwaters...

Reports of Adam Lanza’s war-game obsession and the new FTC rules on children’s online privacy help refocus concerns on the effects of digital media on children. But parental anxiety can be channeled toward solutions.

Here is what many parents face this Christmas:

Among 6-to-12-year-olds, the top wish in gifts is a mobile device – either a tablet computer or a smart phone.

And the top two bestselling video games (names withheld on purpose) involve military shooting.

Add these two together and parents may wonder how they can better safeguard their children from the head-spinning advances in di...