What Is Ethology? (Continued)

Pat Hartman June 23, 2022 No Comments

The previous post mentioned Nikolaas Tinbergen, whom Dr. Pretlow has been known to quote. Tinbergen was one of the founders of ethology, a branch of science that has the unusual trait of sharing its name with another branch that is different in significant ways. It is easy to see how some fields became known as “soft” sciences. Ethology is an example.

Its name comes from ethos, a Greek word for the characteristic or pervasive spirit of a culture, which sounds a lot like the German zeitgeist, having to do with how the community manifests the attitudes, habits and moral beliefs of its particular slice of history. Not surprisingly, the other type of ethology deals with the formation and evolution of human character, both individual and national or collective.

And then there is ethnology, a branch of anthropology that concentrates on the historical development of and social differences between different cultures or races. Here is a whole page that describes the difference between ethology and ethnology, which seems like it could in itself take an entire semester to absorb.

Back on track

At any rate, the ethology we are talking about is the study of animal behavior, particularly under natural conditions in the creatures’ natural environment. This distinguishes it from behaviorism, which concerns animal behavior in a lab setting. The ethologist tends to be less interested in a particular animal group than in how a particular type of behavior manifests in different animals. Behavioral traits are inherited but not immutable, because they can change to achieve survival.

In the old days, the men who studied these subjects tended to stay in their offices, labs and lecture halls, rather than going anywhere near their subjects’ natural habitats. In fact, Tinbergen’s quirky preference for going outside to see what creatures did on their own time is one of the reasons why he was noticed and celebrated. It is puzzling, how a single word was accepted as encompassing such a wide range of concepts.

Distinctions and differences

Animal behavior proceeds by trial and error, and mostly without volition. An insect does not decide to change color to disguise its presence on a leaf — at least not in the same sense that a child decides to defy its parents and stop attending Sunday School. A lion that kills a zebra has probably never been seriously accused of violating an ethical standard, whereas a human who shoots into a crowd and murders several people is definitely doing something that most would consider unethical. Yet, both are living within their ethos.

Most recently, the concept has extended itself to cover another area, described by the title of a book by Lesley A. Sharp, Animal Ethos — The Morality of Human-Animal Encounters in Experimental Lab Science.

This field of interest encompasses the moral challenges that arise from encounters between species in laboratory science, where “experimental research involving nonhuman species provokes difficult questions involving life and death, scientific progress, and other competing quandaries.” The publisher describes…

[…] the rich — yet poorly understood — moral dimensions of daily lab life, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox responses are evidence of concerted efforts by researchers, animal technicians, veterinarians, and animal activists to transform animal laboratories into moral scientific worlds.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What’s the difference between ethnology and ethology?,” CompareWords.com, undated
Source: “Animal Ethos — The Morality of Human-Animal Encounters in Experimental Lab Science,” UCPress.edu, 2018
Image by Tambako The Jaguar/CC BY-ND 2.0

What Is Ethology?

Pat Hartman June 22, 2022 No Comments

The field of ethology is the biological study of animal behaviors, both instinctive and learned, in nature. It is said to have established that these behaviors, just as physical traits, have been shaped by natural selection in the course of evolution. One of the two main founders of the field was Nikolaas (sometimes known as Niko) Tinbergen, who in 1907 published The Study of Instinct, which has been called ethology’s first real text, and credited with basically defining the field’s identity.

The Study of Instinct has been described by the American Psychological Association as “an attempt at an organization of the ethological problems into a coherent whole. This applies especially to the problems of the causes underlying instinctive behavior.” The same page states that Tinbergen’s principal aims were…

(1) to elucidate the hierarchical nature of the system of causal relations, and to stress the paramount importance of recognizing the different levels of integration; and (2) to bring ethology into contact with neurophysiology.

Things went along smoothly for several decades until 1953, when comparative psychologist Daniel Lehrman launched some serious criticism at Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, the field’s other founder. He thought their simple behavioral models were misleading and potentially dangerous to any possibility of correct understanding. In Lehrman’s view, innate behavior was a flawed premise. An uncredited encyclopedia writer explains the psychologist’s position:

There was no evidence for a single causal background of similar behavior patterns in different species. There was no evidence for any underlying neuro-physiological mechanisms, which in any case were likely to be different between species.

The article goes on to say that Tinbergen agreed with many of his critic’s points, conceding that there had been much oversimplification of the basic ideas. Meanwhile, he, along with others, had become more interested in applying the lessons of ethology to human behavior and problems. In 1968, he delivered an important lecture titled “On War and Peace in Animals and Man,” which was then published in the journal Science…

[…] and created much discussion about whether comparisons of human and animal behavior were permissible. Tinbergen compared animal group territories with those of people and pointed out the malfunction of our “innate” appeasement gestures when long-range weapons were being used. He urged scientists not blithely to apply animal results to people.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Study of Instinct,” APA.org, undated
Source: “Nikolaas Tinbergen,” uncredited, undated
Image by ePi.Longo/CC BY-SA 2.0

Animals in a Vacuum

Pat Hartman June 21, 2022 No Comments

A recent article addressed the question of what displacement activity is in wild creatures, and offered an answer:

When an animal is in a stressful state, it would sometimes display a behavior that is totally out of context or irrelevant to the situation it finds itself in.

This, the writer says, “may be as a result of two opposing forces — fighting and escape. It may sometimes serve the purpose of averting or diminishing open conflict.”

But if so, why is it described as out of context or irrelevant? Why are “fight or flight” deemed the only appropriate responses, the only reactions that are acceptable to humans as being relevant or in context? Conflict is, after all, ultimately destructive to the species, and if animals have developed a way to avoid conflict, why isn’t that okay with humans?

Why is conflict-avoiding behavior seen as aberrant, rather than rational? The piece goes on:

On the contrary, some zoologists agree that displacement activity is the basis for normal behavioral patterns. Most courtship behavior may be attributed to displacement activities arising from frustrations.

Then, another subject comes up: something called Vacuum Activity, which the author describes as “a behavior exhibited by an animal when no sign stimulus is provided to release the appropriate behavior after its motivation builds up.”

Again, this definition carries a heavy load of human judgment. Who are we to assign meaning to the actions of creatures whose decisions are backed up by thousands of years of evolutionary experience? It does seem rather audacious to decree what is or is not “appropriate” behavior, when it might simply be the case that humans are not as omniscient as we like to believe.

Vacuum activity has been defined and described in different ways. One short page offers this example:

Squirrels that have lived in metal cages without bedding all their lives do all the actions that a wild squirrel does when burying a nut. It scratches at the metal floor as if digging a hole, it acts as if it were taking a nut to the place where it scratched though there is no nut, then it pats the metal floor as if covering an imaginary buried nut.

This seems similar to what others describe as displacement activity, yet in the barren cage, there is presumably no threat that would inspire either fight or flight. So, what are we to make of that? The writer defines vacuum activities as actions triggered by inherited behavior patterns, although without the key stimulus, and to his credit goes on to say,

Vacuum activity is hard to define because it is never certain that no stimulus of any kind triggered the behavior.

There is, at least, a little bit of humility in admitting that the observer is never certain. Likewise, another definition talks about instinctive behavior that occurs “in the absence of the appropriate stimulus.” Yet another says, “This type of abnormal behavior shows that a key stimulus is not always needed to produce an activity.”

These are interesting points, suggesting that scientists may sometimes make unwarranted assumptions about animals’ reasons for doing the things they do. Why do humans get to define what is an inappropriate stimulus, and what is abnormal behavior? They are, after all, discussing actions that are performed by animals in a state of nature. What could be more “normal”? Is it possible that, in all this analysis, there might be a certain element of arrogant presumption?

Even if boiled down to the most common understanding that displacement behavior is something that an animal does when torn between the alternatives of running away or getting into a fight, how are the attitudes that humans express about that justified? Conflict avoidance is a survival strategy beneficial to the individual, their offspring, and the species. Why do we classify it as a perversion?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Displacement Activity in Animal Behavior,” GulpMatrix.com, 02/08/21
Source: “Vacuum activity,” ArtAndPopularCulture.com, undated
Source: “Vacuum Activity,” EducaLingo.com, undated
Image by Jim Bauer/CC BY-ND 2.0

Happy Juneteenth!

Pat Hartman June 20, 2022 No Comments

Happy Juneteenth!

There’s no post today. We will return with a new post tomorrow. Enjoy the holiday!

Image by Jennifer Gagliardi via Flickr.

Bad Distraction vs. Good Distraction

Pat Hartman June 17, 2022 No Comments

This series is about helping kids find things to do with their hands (and in some cases, their mouths) that will minimize the availability of those body parts to partake in snacking. It is also about encouraging parents to create a mini-culture at home, where hopefully there is at least one meal per day with everyone present, and they confine their attention to the food and the other people. (Translation: no phones or other gadgets.) Eating time is for eating, and other time is for doing things other than consuming food.

There is plenty of authority for this attitude. Distracted eating is, as a nutritionist and registered dietitian Cynthia Sass has said, “a major setup for overeating”:

When you aren’t paying attention, it’s easy to become disconnected from how much you’re eating, or how full you feel. And when you’re out of touch with the eating experience — not noticing the aromas, flavors, and textures because you’re multitasking — you’re more likely to feel unsatisfied, which can lead to post-meal snacking.

Nutrition writer Jessica Migala reminded readers that “a review of studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating when distracted prompted people to consume more calories in the moment — as well as hours later.”

When author Carolyn Williams advises adult readers to avoid boredom and “keep your mind and hands busy,” imagine how much more that is true for young people. Helping them figure out how to accomplish that is a very easy, helpful thing that parents can do. She writes,

The problem is that if you’re busy or distracted you may interpret your body’s dehydration signals as hunger instead, causing you to reach for food instead of what your body truly needs: water. One of the easiest ways to stay hydrated is to carry a water bottle with you…

Message #1 is, do not normalize constant eating, sometimes euphemistically known as grazing. Message #2 is, keep those hands busy with activities more compelling than food. Message #3 is, for extra satisfaction, find activities that don’t need much equipment, and can be done with recycled or cheap materials.

Get ready to make things cheap

One of the keys to success in this field is having efficiently organized storage space for items that can be reused. If someone asks, “Why are you keeping old cardboard cylinders that used to hold toilet paper?” just show them some incredibly brilliant piece of sculpture that your child made from exactly such materials.

Even if new toys and fancy art supplies are affordable, thinking of how to use stuff that would have gone to the landfill is a creative challenge in itself. And the cheaper the ingredients, the more ideas can be tried without feeling pressure to justify the expense. When your medium is, for instance, egg cartons, how wrong can an experiment go?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “5 Things That Make You Overeat,” TIME.com. 08/30/14
Source: “10 Types of Hunger and How to Control Them,” ABCNnews.go.com, 08/26/14
Source: “9 Behaviors That Make You Eat More,” TIME.com, 06/23/15
Image by Doug Tammany/CC BY-SA 2.0

Some Basic Projects

Pat Hartman June 16, 2022 No Comments

Snacking? Not a fan! Let’s talk instead about activities that can promote interest in matters other than food, while keeping restless little hands busy doing creative projects. Let’s aim for a family culture that includes the very important standard of not dragging consumption into every mundane activity. This is a culture that respects artistic creation and recognizes its importance, and acknowledges that some activities are so meaningful that they should not be sullied by consumption.

It is helpful to set a precedent of not eating anything when doing artwork, because it could potentially damage the child’s own artwork or that of another artist. Technically, water should be okay to drink anytime, but if art is happening, keep the glass or bottle away from it!

New faces

Now, consider masks, which offer endless possibilities. Check out after-Halloween sales or party stores for blank white masks, or buy them by the dozen for about $1 apiece from an online retailer. They can be colored with paint or crayon or marker. Stuff can be glued onto them, including hair-like substances at the top or bottom edges.

They can be decorated at any time of year, and there may be a hidden bonus. With any luck, the mask creator will want to wear it all day, which makes eating just a bit more difficult.

Of course, there is another way to make masks, and here it is useful to explain the first two very foundational preparations: hoarding cardboard, and collecting pictures.

Box repurposing

As we have seen, thin cardboard is useful to create missing jigsaw puzzle pieces and indeed, packaging can be an endlessly rich source of art and play materials. Lightweight cardboard is a fabulous unnatural resource. Breakfast cereal and other products come in lightweight boxes that can be cut up and used to make colored, painted, or collage masks. The cardboard has a little bit of “give” to it, so can semi-wrap around the face, tied with string or ribbon. The other needed supplies are really minimal, consisting of scissors and glue sticks.

A different, non-mask possibility is to carefully deconstruct the whole box, and now instead of only one surface, there are six sides of a box to decorate. Markers are effective; crayons or paints can be used as well. Then put it back together, with what used to be the outside on the inside, and the new artwork showing. Secure the seams with tape or glue. Who says art must be flat? Special belongings could be kept in such a fancy box. A gift could be given in it (like maybe, a nice collage mask).

The glory of collage

Even if your own budget does not run to magazine subscriptions, anybody can get hold of slick-page magazines full of color photographs for free from a hairdresser, doctor’s office, library donation shelf, thrift store, or friends and family. If there is any concern, a grownup could screen the material, tear out the pages with nice pictures of animals or whatever, and throw the rest away.

Here is a tip. Save any life-size faces, because they can be chopped apart, and their features mixed and matched to create — ta-dah! — collage masks. Depending on their skill level, kids can trim up the edges of the photos that will become part of their artwork. Don’t worry, they will get better at it, and meanwhile, they are not using their hands to feed their faces.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Images by Lisa Ann Yount, Molly Millions, Alex Pascual Guardia, Ralf Steinberger, Sheila Sund, Jasmine Cat, and Amy fricano/CC BY-SA 2.0

Creative Obesity Prevention

Pat Hartman June 15, 2022 No Comments

Children’s hands and mouths are both heavily implicated in the destructive habit of snacking, so let’s continue with the theme of keeping at least one of those parts busy. Of course, it is technically possible to eat or drink while doing almost any activity, but just because a thing can be done, does not mean it should be done.

Snacking needs to be discouraged, and that starts with parents and other grownups modeling the expected behavior. The culture has normalized the idea of having food or drink within reach, every second of the day. But cultures can change. Parents have the opportunity to create a mini-culture at home. Of course, setting a good example is important not just to prevent obesity, but in every other area of life too.

For instance, parents who hit their kids, and tell them not to fight at school, are standing on shaky ground. When an authority figure does something and at the same time tells children not to do it, feelings arise. Hypocrisy is the fastest and most guaranteed way of losing a child’s willingness to comply with house rules, and indeed to forfeit their respect in general.

Idle hands

There have been many variations of the Henry David Thoreau quotation, “The devil finds work for idle hands.” It is certainly true in the area of overeating and obesity! To supply a child with something fun to occupy their hands is a great step toward eating avoidance. We mentioned the usefulness of jigsaw puzzles, and those are only one-dimensional, so just contemplate how helpful three-dimensional puzzles are. The Rubik’s cube comes readily to mind, but nowadays dozens of types of hand-manipulated puzzles are commercially available.

For little kids, to help their manual skills, a beanbag is nice. How many times (or for how long, if counting isn’t their strong suit) can a child toss it from one hand to the other without dropping it? If there are two kids, how many times can they exchange the beanbag if they both use their right hands? If they both use their left hands? A ball also works for this, of course, but also bounces all over the place. If you’d prefer that the players stay relatively sedate, the beanbag is a better choice. As always, the idea here is to fill up time without filling up mouths.

How about a spoon and a small rubber (or ping-pong) ball? How many times can the child carry it around the room or the yard without dropping it? What about with the other hand? How about walking backwards? If it’s more than one child, so much the better. There is the incentive of competition, but it’s not too rough and rowdy for an indoor game.

Also, indoors, kids can do a fake balancing act. Stretch some masking tape across the floor and let them practice tightrope-walking along the line. Using something longer and more flexible, like string, they can create a twisty, maze-like path on the floor, then tightrope walk on it.

Sympathy for the devil

Normally, screen time is to be avoided, but YouTube is chockfull of videos about how to yo-yo and how to juggle. If you can interest a kid in either of these pursuits, there will be many hours in which her or his hands are not occupied with eating food.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Images by Jorge, Andy Rennie, and Marco Verch Professional/CC BY 2.0

Make the Minutes Count

Pat Hartman June 14, 2022 No Comments

The basic premise here is that every minute a child spends engaged in a rewarding activity that occupies hands and/or mouth is a minute to be treasured and then repeated as often as possible. Another premise is the importance of creating a family “culture” in which food consumption is a separate and discrete activity, carried out only at certain defined times and in the correct place. This is where parents and other caregivers have their chance to shine, by setting a sterling example.

Ample hydration is a worthy goal that serves both physical and mental health, and if all household members have their own water bottles available at any time, that is all to the good. But random food snacks, no. Sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks, no. Any person, young or old, can live a perfectly satisfactory and fulfilling life without constantly shoveling in food, and grownups can demonstrate this daily, just as they demonstrate other cultural standards like no smoking in the home, or no peeing on the ficus plant.

The multipurpose jigsaw puzzle

Chances are, your home has some jigsaw puzzles sitting around in a closet or attic. If your child has never tried out this form of recreation before, now is an excellent time to get started. But any given puzzle, once solved, loses its mystique. So let’s try out some ways of mixing it up, and keep in mind also that there are potential auxiliary benefits.

First, if there is more than one child, hopefully, the older one will pass along these skills to younger siblings, visiting cousins, neighboring playmates, etc. Second, when your kids are old enough for babysitting jobs, they will be equipped with ways to happily occupy their little charges and impress the parents.

Even if you don’t happen to have any jigsaw puzzles on hand, they can be cheaply obtained at a thrift store or yard sale, or from relatives who feel guilty about throwing them away. Now, you may say, “What if pieces are missing?” And we say, “So what?” In fact, before setting the puzzle for a child to solve, you may want to remove a few more pieces, in aid of the first activity.

Fast-forward

There sits the completed puzzle, but with holes! Slide a piece of thin cardboard, like from a cereal box, under there, trace the shapes of the missing pieces, color them in to blend with the whole picture, and carefully cut them out. Puzzle restoration is a skill that any child can be proud of! The object, of course, is not to become puzzle piece forgers, or even puzzle repair technicians. What matters is the process, the thinking and figuring out how to do it. And using the busy fingers for some purpose other than conveying snack food to the mouth.

Okay, so you put it together. Then what?

Take it apart, mix the pieces up, turn all the pieces to the gray side, and try assembling it again! If that is too taxing, just suggest that the child sort the pieces into piles by shape — edge pieces, pieces with three protrusions or “loops,” pieces with four sockets, etc. There is no particular point to this exercise, it’s just a thing that can keep a child occupied for a while, especially if the parent participates occasionally, even while spending most of his or her time doing something else.

Or, once the puzzle has been completed, carefully turn the whole thing to gray side up, and paint a picture on that side, basically creating a whole new and original puzzle!

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Alan Wat/CC BY 2.0

Every Minute Counts

Pat Hartman June 13, 2022 No Comments

Parents can always use some fresh ideas, especially ones that do not involve electronic screens. If you still have a set of encyclopedia volumes around the place, try showing kids how to look for answers in there sometimes. Or if there is a special kind of food they like to eat and/or prepare, get hold of an actual cookbook. You never know what sort of odd thing will seize a child’s attention. Maybe the idea of consulting an actual book will grab their jaded, screen-adapted imagination and open up some new world.

The basic message here is, every moment spent by a child in some activity other than eating is a moment to be treasured. As in the previous post, some of these are CNN staffer Katia Hetter’s suggestions, and some are ideas inspired by hers.

The emphasis is on materials and equipment easy to find and inexpensive, although some things should not be improvised. For instance, face painting is a great idea, and you don’t want to be applying just any old goop to a child’s face, or your own, for that matter. It is probably best to spring for the commercial product, which has some kind of obligation to be safe. The feature of this idea is that neither the painter nor the paintee should be interested in eating while face decoration is in process.

The deeper factors

An interested parent could gently enforce such a standard, without making too big a deal out of it. The hope is that parents can lead by example, letting their behavior demonstrate the expected norm, while setting a standard that becomes part of the family “culture.” America has come to accept that every minute of the day is a food-optional zone, and reversing that trend will be a difficult, uphill battle.

By the way, face paint can also be used on hands, to create monstrous appendages. Even feet can be decorated, although it might be best to conduct that experiment outside, especially if there is a convenient hose to rinse off with. Speaking of which, Hetter also recommends the improvised water slide (but follow local water conservation rules!). A plastic dropcloth, which may be had for under $5, or even a few extra-large trash bags can supply some fun, especially in a backyard with sloping ground.

Again, food is incompatible with this kind of activity. Likewise, the water balloon fight. For someone who has never organized one of those before, there are answers to be found. If you’ve got five kids, they can easily use up at least 50 missiles in 10 minutes. It’s good to have an inflatable kiddie pool filled with water as the supply depot for the balloons that are filled and ready.

This article from Camp Beyond offers several creative variants, like dodgeball, volleyball and the water balloon piñata, that really sound fun.

And when the fun is over, of course, the kids stick around to help pick up the shattered balloon shreds and put everything away.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Summer is not completely canceled. Here are 100 things we can do with or without kids,” CNN.com, 07/23/20
Source: “How to Create an Epic Backyard Water Balloon Fight,” CampBeyond.com, 07/15/21
Image by Gail Hampshire/CC BY 2.0

More Positive Moves for Parents

Pat Hartman June 10, 2022 No Comments

When a child’s passionate interest is recreational eating, it is possible that at least a portion of it could be replaced by a passionate interest in something else. There is only so much time in a day, and small incremental changes sometimes add up to enormous differences. A half-hour of watching silliness on a screen while munching on snack food might be eliminated by substituting something else in its place. Those half-hours can multiply and blossom into whole new areas of interest that eventually become more compelling than stuffing our faces with fake food.

Katia Hetter’s fabulous list of things to do with children, or to entice children into doing, is heavy on play and learning, both of which can be pursued at a very low cost.

Why not play cards? There are all kinds of specialized “Authors” decks, including one that features Irish writers. Knowing one of these facts could make the difference between a child being admitted — or not — to college some day. There are card games that teach how to spot logical fallacies and cognitive biases — skills which, frankly, would be helpful to a lot of grownups, too. There is a great classic French card game about accumulating road mileage in cars, where you can put a speed limit on your opponent, make them run out of gas, or even cause an accident.

The basis

Of course, to make this into real quality time, in a potentially life-changing way, a couple of rules are needed. No phones and no eating are two that come readily to mind. As a parent who finds an activity you can do with your kids, or they can do with each other while maintaining a peaceful atmosphere, you are way ahead of the game.

One big reason why kids eat is because they are unhappy. Whether the parent feels like that is justified, or not, is irrelevant. Helping a child be a little bit happier by giving them undivided, positive attention for a while can only improve everyone’s days. Caveat: You may not perceive results immediately. But every minute we spend being really with our kids is an investment that will pay off in the future.

Another area

Music is a field with enormous potential, and it does not need to be expensive. A young musician does not need to start out with an electric guitar and amp, or a complete drum kit. The kazoo is an excellent solo instrument, or can be played along with any recorded music, at a very reasonable cost. Why not form a kazoo band? (See illustration.) Note: it is impossible to play the kazoo and eat at the same time.

Check out a pawn shop or thrift store for cheap, easy-to-play instruments, and bring home a xylophone or a ukulele or a rainstick. Electronic screens are not always evil, because on them, instructions for how to play any instrument can be found.

Yes, parents need to work, rest, and have some peace of mind. Maybe we don’t want to hear a cacophony of sound. Fortunately, we live in a miracle age where electronic keyboards come with headphones or earbuds. There are instruments a child can bang away at all day, and the grownups never hear a thing. The point being, again, every minute counts. During those minutes, fingers that are pressing black and white keys are not diving into a bag of chips.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Summer is not completely canceled. Here are 100 things we can do with or without kids,” CNN.com, 07/23/22
Image by bareknuckleyellow/CC BY 2.0

What Is Ethology? (Continued)

Back on track

Distinctions and differences

What Is Ethology?

Animals in a Vacuum

Happy Juneteenth!

Happy Juneteenth!

Bad Distraction vs. Good Distraction

Get ready to make things cheap

Some Basic Projects

New faces

Box repurposing

The glory of collage

Creative Obesity Prevention

Idle hands

Sympathy for the devil

Make the Minutes Count

The multipurpose jigsaw puzzle

Fast-forward

Okay, so you put it together. Then what?

Every Minute Counts

The deeper factors

More Positive Moves for Parents

The basis

Another area

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources