Hi friends - I hope you have a wonderful Halloween and a great weekend.

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Thanks for stopping by - Betsy

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In about 36 hours, I will have roughly 350 pounds of candy stashed throughout my house. The question is, what to do NOW to plan for all that (or for getting rid of some of it, or at least for slowing down its consumption.)

Beverly Rothstein is a nutritionist and child obesity expert. She’ll be a guest on my radio show on Sunday. In the meantime, here are her tips for “limiting the damage” tomorrow night (for both kids and parents). Enjoy - and thanks for stopping by!

The bane of everyone’s nightmares are those little Trick or Treating kids that gather “tons” of goodies each Halloween.

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Hi friends - Here’s this week’s column. I hope you enjoy this tale from the hart homefront!

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Thanks for stopping by - Betsy

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Hi Friends - this week, David Staal is my guest on “It Takes a Parent.” Until this summer, David was the head of the children’s ministry Promiseland at Willow Creek Community Church. He recently left that position to head a ministry in Michigan called Kids Hope USA. www.kidshopeusa.org.

What he has to share is amazing. Kids Hope pairs churches with public schools and kids at risk around the country - and the schools are glad to have the churches involved! You are going to want to hear how and why that’s possible. More public schools are asking for the ministry than there are churches available to provide it!

David will also talk about his own kids, and helping them through a difficult transition with the move which in their words “ripped them away” from their friends. With the economy the way it is and various transitions in our own homes, a lot of us may need his insights.

As always, I get a chance to touch on some issues of the day - like, some awful advice to a new mom in a recent advice column - in the “HeartBeat” section of the show.

I hope you’ll tune in Sunday at noon central time, at AM1160/WYLL Chicago, or streaming live at www.wyll.com, or later here or at the end of the week on NationalReview.com.

As always thanks for listening, thanks for your notes and e-mails - and have a great week!

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I know, my family is hardly living in “hard times,” but. . . one doesn’t know what tomorrow will bring, and I’m preparing!

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I hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy your family, and thanks for stopping by!

Betsy Hart

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Hi friends - I hope you’ll tun into “It Takes a Parent” today at 12 noon central, on AM1160 WYLL, or streaming live at www.wyll.com.

My first guest is New York attorney Philip Howard, who heads a public interest group called “The Common Good” - (commongood.org). He argues that we have become a society obsessed with eliminating risk, especially when it comes to our kids and safety, and that this approach is nothing short of dangerous. He offers some interesting strategies for changing that thinking. Philip’s articles have appeared in the New York times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications, and you’ll want to get his insights on how we might be putting our kids at risk our by keeping them “safe!”

Then, I get to talk to Matthew Locricchio, author of “the 2nd International Cookbook for Kids.” This is a really fun cook book that can draw kids into cooking on their own - and for the family! As a single mom to four kids who think a regular diet of chicken nuggets would be just fine, I love his ideas and have started to implement them in my home. After the show I’ll be posting one of the recipes in his book.

So, tune in in a few minutes or listen here after the show via podcast or with our simple “one-click” slide-bar (the shows will now be posted my Monday evening) and of course on Fridays you can go to NationalReview.com and hear “It Takes a Parent” there.

Hey, as always thanks for stopping by - and have a great week!

Betsy Hart

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Hi friends - here’s this week’s column.

You’ll want to check out the Center for Parent/Youth Culture at www.cpyu.org

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(This weekend, don’t look at your retirement plans - just look at your family and enjoy!)

Thanks for stopping by. Betsy

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Hi friends - I hope you are all hanging in there with this depressing economic news.

One word of caution (hope?) for all of us - remember it’s in the interest of the media to make the economic “crisis” as bad as possible. Consider everything from the coming bird flu pandemic (didn’t happen) to the shortage of the flue vaccine a few years ago (when people who’d never gotten one in their life suddenly thought if they didn’t get it that year they would die) and on it goes. I don’t for a minute suggest we aren’t entering a period of very serious financial difficulty in our economy, just that we should remember the media spin is always to boost their own bottom line with high ratings by making the bad into the worst.

Anyway, speaking of debt, the next frontier to consider? Our kids! It was “easy” to let them start their adult lives thousands, even tens of thousands in debt, in good economic times. Things are different now. We need to be aware of how to help our almost grown and grown children before they get crushed by a lifetime of paying back loans.

Here’s a good column in today’s WSJ about this very issue:

Kids and Debt

Thanks for stopping by.

Betsy

P.S. - for those of you experiencing difficulty downloading the radio show, it should be cleared up now. There are two different buttons for you to access - you can listen to shows in the window via a sliding bar, or download it into another window, and listen to it that way. Sunday’s show should be up late today (we’re having some technical problems with that one.) I hope you’ll listen to it if you couldn’t catch it on Sunday.

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Yes! Please tune in to my radio show today to hear more. I’ll be talking with Walt Mueller, President of thw Center for Parent Youth Understanding (www.CPYU.org) in Pennsylvania, who will walk us through how to help our kids think about the “cultural soup” they are surrounded by, not just run from it. Because after all - we can’t!

Walt is a Christian, and his website is geared to Christian families - but it’s great for any parent of a child or teen.

In the Heart Beat of the show, we’ll get to “This Old Marriage” and “Baby Organizers.”

I hope you tune in today at noon central to WYLL/AM1160, or listen streaming on www.wyll.com, or after the show here or later in the week on NationalReview.com

Have a terrific Sunday, and as always, thanks for stopping by.

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Hi Friends - here’s this week’s column.

With school back in full force, it’s good to remember our kids need a lot of playtime too!

Have a great weekend and have some fun! - Betsy

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P.S. - There’s a great radio show coming your way tomorrow about engaging our kids and understanding the world they live in. More on that later!

For those of you who have e-mailed me about technical problems in downloading the show, we’re on it, and thanks for your patience!

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