In Bed With Branding: Virtual Worlds Pair With Children’s Hospitals

May 3, 2009 What's with all the children's hospitals partnering and news-making so much as of late? This spring, “Operation Teen Book Drop” gave bed bound kids across the country over 8000 titles from young adult book publishers to support Teen Literature Day, sponsored by YALSA, readergirlz, and GuysLitWire. A tad earlier, Dell Children’s Medical Center in Texas became … [Read more...]

Shaping Youth Co-Sponsors “Consuming Kids” Movie Premiere!

April 2, 2009 Academic rockstars are descending upon U.C. Berkeley April 24th, as CCFC leaders speak in person on the commercialization of childhood and the impact on our culture!Shaping Youth is proud to be a media sponsor of the S.F. Bay Area Premiere of the movie Consuming Kids, and co-sponsor of this all-star panel in time for 'spring cleaning' 2009 to get rid of all this … [Read more...]

Standby: Real Life Has Usurped My Digital World

Jan. 26, 2009: I’m feeling very “First lady-ish” right now, since Michelle Obama recently described herself as "first and foremost . . . Malia and Sasha's mom." Likewise, Shaping Youth begins at home, and I’d be full of hooey if I didn’t believe my digital persona should take a backseat to my real life responsibilities both personally and professionally. Once upon a time, … [Read more...]

Wii Are Family: A French Look At A Global Gaming Phenom

Romantic that I am, I took French in 8th grade yet proceeded to live in locations where Japanese, Chinese or Spanish were the language of choice; yet somehow, French still sticks in my brain. There are plenty of language resource hubs and brain data expressing the myths of kids' critical learning years for foreign language, but regardless of linguistics research all I know … [Read more...]

Money Management for Kids: Chores, Allowance & Digital Nagging

Part Two of our interview with PAYjr CEO David Jones includes one of the rarely used aspects of PAYjr's chore and allowance program (only 5% evidently) where parents can set up cell phone reminders for follow-through in cyber-nag style.Mind you, critics have cried foul that this is outsourcing parenting and discipline to tech gizmos, but frankly, I’m not one of ‘em. Nope. No … [Read more...]