Okay, so this is disturbingly bone-headed: Tomorrow, the edutainment company Leapfrog begins shipping the new “Text & Learn,” a new Blackberry-like toy that lets kids “ages 3 to 6″ pretend to text-message: Text and Learn [says Leapfrog] is designed to let little learners play in a grown-up way! Children can exchange text messages with their [...]

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The mood was cheerful here at PBH Headquarters today: The Perfect Baby Handbook received lovely complements from both Nicole Feliciano at Momtrends, who praised its “biting wit,” and high-profile father Greg Williams, author of the new dad-lit novel, The Accidental Father, and executive editor at Details magazine, who wrote: Dale’s hilarious skewering of helicopter parents [...]

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After yesterday’s meditation on toddler vehicles, I stumbled on a website hawking retro toddler firetrucks. Sold alongside these tiny $240 emergency vehicles—propelled by pedal power—is a small collection of firefighter garb. As you can see, the options are completely gender-neutral…. Why do little boys get to douse imaginary flames in realistic uniforms, while little girl [...]

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The current obsession with over-achieving parenting has yielded at least one good thing: some beautifully overachieving toys. Rarely before have children’s products been so well-designed. My favorite current example: The reusable fabric wall stickers created by the Australians behind Mae—especially this completely cool update on paper dolls. Ingenious: The persistent problem with paper dolls, of [...]

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In the most novel twist yet in the unfolding “Jon & Kate plus 8″ scandal, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is claiming that the toxic couple is cavalierly planning to send their eight young kids to Swiss boarding schools, so the elder Gosselins can focus on becoming more repellent in a “retooled” version of the show (called [...]

» Continue reading "Finally, a “Jon & Kate” rumor that’s too loathsome to be true"