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: