Make sure your kids brush their teeth long enough with this simple trick

I'm not sure there could be a worse headline, as far as I'm concerned: "Church Attendance Boosts Student GPA's." Luckily, it's not quite that simple. Researchers did find that going to church affects a teenager's grades, chances of dropping out, and sense of school community as much as whether or not the parents had college degrees, but it's not so much God's work as it is several other, identifiable factors.

The reasons for the improved performance include:

• The students have role models they see regularly from multiple generations.
• Parents are more likely to be in touch with the parents of their kids' friends.
• It is more likely that their friends' families will have the same values and expectations as their own.
• They tend toward higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities.

Other studies that have identified benefits of church attendance also pointed to the social networking and psychological aspects of being a member of a church as the key factors. If your kids attend church already, these findings may not be of much use to you, but not everyone goes to church or has any interest in doing so. For those of us in the latter category, this research has great value.

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School should be a safe place, one where kids can concentrate on learning, not on staying alive. Sadly, however, that's not always the case. "If you're afraid you're going to get beat up after school, it's hard to concentrate when you're in algebra class," said David Kopperud of the California Department of Education. In 1998, the World Health Organization surveyed more than fifteen thousand sixth through tenth grade students and found that nearly a third had been involved in bullying.

There are serious consequences of bullying and not just for the students directly involved. The American Medical Association estimates that as many as 160,000 kids refuse to go to school each day because of bullying. The kids miss out on their education and the schools lose their funding. Further, kids can end up with problems that affect their relationships, self-esteem, and emotional well-being. The U.S. Secret Service found that three out of four school shooters were bullied.

These days, there's an added twist to the problem -- the internet. Bullying has become "more extreme, more humiliating and more public," according to Elayne Savage, a psychotherapist and author of "Don't Take It Personally: The Art of Dealing With Rejection." She sees the effects of bullying in her adult clients too. "You never forget the hurtful slurs and actions," she says.

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Need some pencils for the new school year? How about a ruler? If you've got a cent, you can get them -- at Staples and OfficeMax, respectively, in some areas. Target regularly offers school supplies for next to nothing in the weeks leading up to the start of the school year. (Wanna meet a teacher? Hit Target at 8am on a Sunday in August -- they'll be there stocking up on pencil boxes, crayons, and -- literally -- hundreds of folders for their classrooms.)

As the economy nose dives, parents aren't rushing out to buy brand new supplies when last year's zizzors (as my daughter calls them) work just fine. Retailers are running scared and are offering lots of "loss leaders" -- items priced below their cost -- to get shoppers in the door. This is nothing new, of course -- it happens every year -- but this year retailers are dropping prices even more than usual, even to the point of offering products for free.

Naturally, the stores are hoping you'll buy other, more profitable items while you're there and that's usually the case. Still, if your kid's backpack still holds books and their binders still hold paper, do you really need new ones? Are you buying all new supplies or making do with what you have as much as possible?

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Tom Cruise is known for being an action hero of sorts -- from prancing about in his skivvies in Risky Business to chasing about as super spy Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series -- but that doesn't mean he can't carry his kid's playthings out in public. In fact, he was spotted doing just that recently in New York.

From a stuffed bunny to a Cabbage Patch doll and from a coloring book to a baby bottle, he'll apparently carry anything his little Suri might need for a day or even a night on the town. So is he no longer the macho star he was before parenthood? Of course not! You can't get much more manly than to carry a child's toy for them, if you ask me.

No, if you want to rag on Tom Cruise, don't do it for taking care of his kid. There are plenty of other things to ridicule him for: his bad acting, the whole space alien religion thing, and his propensity for hopping up and down on talk show hosts' couches.

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My thirteen-year-old niece won't admit to liking their music, but she will say she's going to marry a Jonas brother. Or maybe all of them. I'm not really sure because she was gushing so much when she spoke of them that it was hard to understand her. In any case, I gather they are something teenage girls fawn over. The only problem is, if it's Joe Jonas she's after, she'd better get a move on -- there's no telling how long he's going to be around now.

You see, he just turned nineteen and one of his presents was a motorcycle. Sure, a helmet was included, but that doesn't change the fact that the term for someone who rides a motorcycle amongst nurses like my sister-in-law is "organ donor." At least, that's what she told me when I was thinking of getting a bike for commuting to work.

Of course, what goes around comes around, as they say -- my son Jared has been eyeing the neighbor kid's motorbike and asking if he can get one. Given that he's only six, the answer is pretty easy, but what about when he gets older? Would I be willing to let him commute to high school and college on a motorcycle or scooter? That's a much tougher question and I'm not sure what the answer is except that I'm pretty sure it will be either "No!" or "Hell No!".

Would you let your kid get a motorcycle? Helmet or not, they can be deadly. Of course, so can just about anything else. What do you think?

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No parent would want to have to deal with a situation like this. Your teenage daughter is acting a little odd (more so, even, than one would expect of a teenager) so you decide to check things out a bit and there, on her cell phone, you find a text message from her teacher. "It happened around 9:35 at night," said the girl's mother who didn't want to be identified. "It said, 'I don't want her to find out, I don't want her to get hurt. I need to meet with you.'"

Checking the phone bill, she found many calls and messages from the teacher, at all hours. "He called her at midnight," said the mom. "They were on the phone for 30 minutes." She notified the school by phone and in writing, but, so far, the response has been a bit unimpressive and certainly not what one, as a parent, would hope for.

The school district admitted that the teacher did "communicate with [the girl] at times of the day and night that was concluded to be unprofessional" and apologized for a "lack of professional behavior." The district also said that a letter would be added to the teacher's file. As for the teen, however, she's still in his class.

After the local news media contacted the school district, the mother says they are starting to take some action and may remove the girl from his classes. I think if it were me, I would make darn sure the teacher were removed from the school, unless there were a pretty darn good reason why he was calling my teenage daughter at midnight.

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Blake Peebles likes to play Guitar Hero, the video game that lets players pretend to be rock stars with a small plastic guitar. In fact, he likes to play it so much that the sixteen-year-old has dropped out of school to be able to play the game more. His hope is that he can turn his affinity for the game into a career and, so far, it looks like he might have a chance.

His parents agreed to his plans but only if he were to be tutored at home. They would rather he stayed in school, but Blake managed to wear down their resistance. "We couldn't take the complaining anymore," says his mom. "He always told me that he thought school was a waste of time." So far, Blake has won about a thousand dollars worth of prizes.

I suppose as long as the kid is learning what he would learn in school, it doesn't really matter what he does with the rest of his time, but it sure seems to me like putting all his eggs in one basket -- and a basket that has yet to show it has any real financial potential. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let my kids quit school to play video games, no matter how good they are.

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Red Bull, the popular energy drink may give you wings in more ways than one -- according to an Australian study, they might get you a harp as well and a new, fluffy home in the clouds. Researchers found that even one can of sugar-free Red Bull appears to make blood more "sticky," increasing the risk of blood clots.

"After one can it seemed to turn the young individual into one with more of the type of profile you would expect to see with someone with cardiovascular disease," said Scott Willoughby, of the Cardiovascular Research Centre at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Adelaide University. "People who already have existing cardiovascular disease may want to talk to their physician before they drink Red Bull in future."

"The study does not show effects which would go beyond that of drinking a cup of coffee," says Red Bull spokeswoman Linda Rychter. "Therefore, the reported results were to be expected and lie within the normal physiological range." Some of students that participated in the study said they drink as many as eight cans of Red Bull a night when they want to stay awake to study; the cans already warn customers not to drink more than two a day.

Although the study was done with college students, I know that a lot of high school students -- and kids even younger -- drink Red Bull. It might be worthwhile to talk to them to make sure they don't drink too much.

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Returning home from my company picnic yesterday, with my two thirteen-year-old nieces with me, I jokingly asked if either of them had their driver's license so that they could drive at least some of the way home and I could take a nap. (Neither one did, of course, and, really, I was just kidding.) In Texas, though, that's not something they kid about.

Police officers in the East Texas town of Longview noticed a minivan turn into a driveway and bump into the house.

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Investigating, they found a twelve-year-old girl behind the wheel. She told the officers that she had just driven her mother to a bar. Upon checking at the pub, they indeed found thirty-five-year-old Jennifer Lynn Rosenberg who admitted to having her daughter drive her there.

On the one hand, you have to give Rosenberg credit for not wanting to risk drinking and driving, but on the other hand... Perhaps it would be best if she just stayed away from the bars altogether. In the meantime, Child Protective Services is looking into the situation.

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