vaccines | PulseonParenting

It’s Time to Return to School: Should I Vaccinate My Children?

Aug 30 2016

It’s hard to believe the back-to-school season is upon us. Kids love the flurry of activity that swirls around shopping for new clothes and shoes (a pair of Tom’s, please, requests my 9 year-old, already a cute-shoe guru), school supplies and for us, homeschool curricula. It’s not quite as much fun completing the requisite back-to-school paperwork and gathering and maintaining (ouch) up-to-date health records (yes, even for homeschoolers). As I do the paper-pushing, I am reminded it is time to repost the following essay on the importance of vaccinating our children: I’m going to give this to you straight….

It’s Time to Return to School: Should I Vaccinate My Children?

Aug 11 2015

It’s hard to believe it’s time for our kids to return to school. Today was “Fall Check-In Day” (aka Registration Day) for my kids. Not being Kindergarteners, or otherwise new to the school, our paperwork process was pretty straightforward. But for new families, registration can be a seemingly insurmountable pile of blank forms and information. I remember those days…especially when I had three sets of vaccination records to dig up and then transcribe to official school documents! But I’m taking a long time to get to my point. Given it’s that time of year to get school health records in order, and given…

Your Child Needs the HPV Vaccine

May 20 2015

A few years back I sat in a church basement with my parenting group and listened to a male OB-GYN describe how he discussed safe sex with his own kids. Yes, that was a church basement. Yes, that was a male gynecologist. And the topic at that moment was, yes, kids and sex. I hope I got your attention. Because he sure got mine, especially as this seemed an unlikely and absurd senario. But still, the topic was pertinent and this doctor’s message clear: we as parents would be sorely amiss to assume our kids will honor abstinence at our request. He…

Jenny McCarthy, Mouthpiece Mom

Feb 18 2015

Tired of all the vaccine talk? I kinda am. And I thought it was just receiving vaccines that caused sleepiness (my kids crashed big after boosters). But no, this time it is my brain that is tired. But to lay this issue to rest (at least for now) I need to get something off my mind. Actually, I need to get someone off my mind. Jenny McCarthy. Mom, famous-person, apparent anti-vaxx advocate. It says something when a well-known individual’s stint as Playmate of the Year gets upended by her staunch support of the vaccines-cause-autism movement (McCarthy even went so far as to…

Why We Vaccinate

Feb 05 2015

[For this week’s photo, imagine a seven year old girl with glasses, opening Christmas presents. That little girl is me, with the chicken pox] The answer may seem obvious, but why do we vaccinate children against diseases we may never have heard of, much less whose names we can’t pronounce? Parents and guardians who consent to having their children vaccinated do get that information (it is a federal law that families receive vaccine information sheets, otherwise known as VIS’s). However, parents who chose to forgo vaccines for their children are not required to take VIS’s. Why not? Every parent…

Another Important Fact About Childhood Vaccines

Jan 29 2015

After posting Should I Vaccinate My Children? yesterday and “sleeping on it” I realized another important piece of information needs inclusion. Any parent considering or reconsidering whether to vaccinate their kids needs to know this: it’s never too late. If your child is school-aged (even a collegiate) and never been vaccinated or only partially vaccinated, age-appropriate “catch-up” protocols exist. Grown ups may also apply.

Jan 28 2015

I‘m going to give this to you straight. As in 23-gauge needle straight: ∗Vaccinate your kids. ∗ Let them eat dirt. ∗Don’t freak if they eat their boogers. ∗(Do freak if they eat someone else’s.) Evidence supports doing the first two. The third falls under the “can’t hurt ’em” line of thinking. And the fourth, well, goes without saying. What can hurt, as we know, is the sting from a needle delivering a vaccine, often several administered in rapid succession. But what can hurt even more are the repercussions from choosing to forgo “shots.”

Tag - vaccines