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Crib notes: The trouble with healthy school lunches

The reviews on healthy school lunches are in and the verdict is: Nasty! Kids are overweight and schools are finally making school lunches healthier. Unfortunately, they are experiencing some resistance from their lunchtime consumers. Prepared properly, veggies are a delight, but oh, can they go wrong... As a result, schools are working to find recipes that are both healthy and tasty, as educators

The reviews on healthy school lunches are in and the verdict is: Nasty! Kids are overweight and schools are finally making school lunches healthier. Unfortunately, they are experiencing some resistance from their lunchtime consumers. Prepared properly, veggies are a delight, but oh, can they go wrong... As a result, schools are working to find recipes that are both healthy and tasty, as educators are concerned that experiences with non-palate-pleasing health food may actually be turning kids off to healthy eating.

Truancy officers are going high-tech. Some school districts are now saddling chronic hookies with GPS tracking devices. Kids are asked to enter a code into the hand-held device five times a day. While some districts are reporting increased attendance as a result of the devices, it's hard to imagine that kids who can't remember to show up to class will remember to enter in a code into their tracking device (or not figure out a work-around to the system, like paying a friend or sibling to do it for them).

YouTube, which delights viewers with silly cat videos and dancing wedding parties, is showing a darker side and providing parents with one more reason to watch what their kids are doing online. Cutting or self-injuring videos are receiving millions of hits on the popular web site. The videos tend to glamorize the acts and serve as a how-to.

Begone are the bicuspeds, no more are the molars. Losing your baby teeth is one of childhood's great rites of passage. For parents however, the loss of those little teeth can bring up a whole host of emotions, from mourning the toddler that was, to fear of making the old tooth-for-cash exchange undetected, to wondering how to determine the going rate for perfect pearly whites in today's marketplace. How did you feel when your baby lost his or her first tooth?

This week will mark the last space shuttle launch for Discovery. The thrill of space exploration has long excited the imaginations of kids around the country. During the 1960s, the Space Race encouraged America's youth to study math and science in order to beat the Russians to the moon. In the 1980s, we just thought "Space Camp" was a cool movie. So, grab your kid's Buzz Lightyear action figure (you know, as a demonstration model), talk to them about the launch, and encourage them to dream big, just like the astronauts.