HOSPITAL, SHMOSPITAL IMAGINE YOU'RE FINE
Your kid is complaining about a pain in his tummy. Do you a) frantically hightail it to the ER or b) have him imagine himself floating on a cloud? Consider option b before you buckle up for the hospital - firing up a child's imagination can help them reduce their abdominal pains, a new study has found. Researchers at the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine treated 34 children aged six to 15 with functional abdominal pain by exposing them to relaxation CDs and suggesting ways they can reduce their discomfort (one image had kids imagine letting a special shiny object melt in their hands, which they'd then rub on their belly to create a magic protective barrier). Seventy three per cent of kids said their abdominal pain was reduced by half. Now if only parents could imagine away that pit they get in their stomachs whenever their kids fall ill.
ART CLASS FAIL LOST DIGITS
8
Number of fingers a British 16-year-old lost in 2007 when her hands got stuck in a tub of plaster of Paris in high school art class. The girl suffered serious burns as the plaster set and reached temperatures of near 60 C. She endured 12 operations which left her with no fingers on one hand and only two on the other, Reuters reports.
$31,137
Amount the school was ordered to pay up in response to the art-class disaster. Giles School in Boston, northeastern Britain, was slapped with a $28,000 fine for breaching health and safety rules and for failing to report the incident to health officials. The unnamed girl got just over $4,000 to cover her legal costs, presumably because paying for new fingers would just be too pricey.
INSURANCE DENIED
TOO CHUBBY TO COVER
"We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill."
- Bernie Lange, father of Alex, a four-month old Colorado baby who was denied health insurance for being too chubby.
The plight of the 17-pound tot became fodder for national health-care reform and cost the insurance company a ton of embarrassment, the New York Daily News reports. Rocky Mountain Health Plans backed down and changed their rules last week after public outrage at the insurance underwriter's frank denial of coverage: "Your baby is too fat."
SMOOTH MOVES ALL THE SINGLE BABIES
The world cooed when Baby Cory bobbed along to Beyoncé's Single Ladies music video, making the 13-month-old an overnight YouTube sensation. Then the limber Baby Ava shook her diaper-padded tushie for the camera, her rendition garnering more than a million views on the video-sharing site. An influx of tribute videos has people wondering "Why do babies love Beyoncé?"
"The song is very Teletubbies," musician Kenny Mellman told Time magazine. Parents point to the song's addictive beats for getting their little ones hooked. Even the video choreographers said they had children in mind when cooking up the dance moves. It's a shame Baby Cory's success didn't precede the sleek music video - he would have made a great back-up dancer.