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Your television responds so beautifully to your commands, delivered by remote from across the room. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a remote to control your kid? Now there is!

The Control-a-Kid remote contains all the settings that a parent needs to keep a tiny or school-age kid in line. With just the push of a button you can get your kid to stop screaming, smoking, or sulking. You can press “Tidy Room,” “Say Thank You,” or the ever-popular center-button option, “Grow Up.” There’s a nice button to make the kids go play, too.

Do I have to tell you this doesn’t actually work? No, I didn’t think so. It’s still funny. And, on the upside, it doesn’t require batteries.

Control-a-Kid Remote, $6.99

Big, tempting containers of blueberries for sale at Wal-Mart…what could be the problem? Maybe that those blueberries might have been picked by little kids.

The problems were found by the state of Michigan, working for farms that supplied the Adkins Blue Ribbon Blueberry Co. with berries. Kids as young as age five were found working on the farms. Here’s a priceless quote on the child-labor scandal from the Independent: “The children were being put to work because their small hands are more efficient at picking the tiny fruit.” NPR says that farm checks also found hazardous sewage leaks and infestations of bugs and rodents in the migrant settlements.

Footage of the wee blueberry pickers was featured prominently on Nightline last week. Kinda makes those berries not taste so sweet.

Let’s put aside the question of whether or not you want to get the H1N1 vaccine because that is one spicy meatball, and for the time being assume you want to get it for yourself or your children. The first few flu-vaccine clinics last weekend were swamped with patients seeking the vaccine, waiting hours on line according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There will be more clinics in November, and only time will tell what the waits there will be like.

Vaccine events vary in each city; you can supposedly go to your city’s public health department website (here is a list of California health departments) for more information. Many of the sites are all but useless, with a lot of information on covering your mouth when you cough but not much about where to get the vaccine they keep advising you to get. San Francisco’s site is typical in that it tells you to call your primary care provider and ask about vaccines, but the San Franicsco health department’s swine flu Twitter feed has more up-to-date information, and SF residents can also call 311 for updates. Contra Costa’s public health department site is a welcome contrast from SF’s, with detailed info on upcoming drive-through flu clinics.

Many Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS MinuteClinic locations also have the H1N1 shots; call the stores nearest you to ask. Kaiser patients can phone 800-573-5811 to find out where to go get the shot. Walgreens also has dedicated flu shot clinics. Flu.gov has a ton of information and links that will panic you and make you say “Just tell me where to get the shot! Argh!” Hmm, maybe you’re better off calling your primary care physician after all.

If you have a little LEGO lover in your house and a LEGO store somewhere near you, maybe the little one’s birthday party should be there this year. For a surprisingly reasonable $125, 10 kids can invade the LEGO store for a party, which includes goody bags, invitations, thank you cards, a few LEGOs, a LEGO host wise in the ways of brick-building, and a $100 gift card (you’ll need it–typically each kid at the party builds a themed LEGO object from a kit, which you must also buy). Want to throw the same party at home? It’s $115, plus the cost of buying whatever LEGO kits you want to let them have at. Oh, and the home party kits don’t include the host, so you’ll probably have to do a lot more reading of instructions and directing the kids as they build their Pirate, Bionicle, Power Miner, or Star Wars creation.

There are LEGO stores in 21 states, but if you happen to not live near one, you can still put together your own LEGO party. The bricks are for sale in almost any toy store, and there are plenty of sellers on Etsy who make things like customized LEGO invitations, LEGO cake decorations, and party favors like T-shirts and LEGO soaps in interesting scents–”monkey farts” sure would appeal to most seven-year-old boys I know. You want to go really crazy? Commission a LEGO mosaic portrait of your child.

For more details on official LEGO parties, see lego.com.

We’ve covered the Belly Bandit before; it’s one of many cinches on the market that help suck in a postpartum belly. That’s all fine and well, but what about the flab that’s pushed above and below the cinch? That’s where the Belly Bandit’s Mother Tucker comes in, a fine-lookin’ tank that holds you in from boob to lower belly. The Mother Tucker, while not looking like grandma’s girdle, holds the girls up (assuming they’re not too big; if you’re stacked, you may still need a bra), and tightens your gut all the way down and all the way around.

A compression garment is never going to be as comfy as a stretched out T-shirt, but the Mother Tucker is bearable, made of soft knit fabric, and featuring an anti-roll bottom that stays put and doesn’t roll up to expose your flab. This is what you put on when you want to show everyone you haven’t let yourself go. You know, mostly.

Belly Bandit Mother Tucker, $69.95

Remember Fashion Plates, that ’80s toy with interchangeable plates of a woman’s top, middle, and bottom that allowed you to create different outfits? There are a whole bunch of different games out now that are essentially the same idea, but seem awfully mature for smaller girls. A bit too sexy, a bit too Bratz-ish to please many moms.

Magic Cabin’s Fairy Design Kit is just a shade sweeter. The kit comes with 130 templates of fairy hats, cloaks, shoes, hairstyles, and accessories; kids trace over them to combine, and then color them in with the 12 included color pencils or 12 watercolor pencils (the color smears into watercolor paint when wet). Add glitter (included), name your brand-new fairy, and pop her into the portfolio (included) for safekeeping.

Fairy Design Kit, $19.98

Just when you thought it was safe to make a decision about circumcision, New York Magazine presents one of the most panoramic views of the foreskin debate imaginable. The piece starts with the basics: how is a circumcision performed? Who is on the other end of the sharp cutting instruments, a doctor or a mohel?

Then comes the ammunition on both sides of the either/or question. How much does it hurt? What complications can ensue? And is it true that circumcision reduces the rates of both cancer and AIDS?

Finally, New York leaves the realm of information that, while valuable, we’ve heard before, and wades into the truly fascinating nitty gritty. Female correspondents weigh in on the aesthetic appeal of the uncut penis: is it hot or hideous? And one man who chose to undergo the procedure as an adult explains why–and why he’s happier this way.

Whatever the state of your son’s penis, this is fascinating reading, and an excellent summing up of the arguments for and against the cut. Though the even-handedness of the treatment may not change minds one way or another, it will provide plenty of support for whatever position you’ve already taken. Oh, and if you can view the surgical instruments of circumcision and not get a little faint, you’re a stronger woman than me.

Is it a federal parenting law that toddlers have to wear Robeez? They’re soft and flexible and all, but they sure are fug: Shiny and decorated with graphics that put me in mind of that horrible whiner Calliou. Shudder.

Simple’s Infant’s Weegee is a lot like Hanna Andersson’s popular Swedish moccasin, an all-in-one shoe-and-sock combo for the colder months. But to my eye this particular model is a lot more subtle than any of Hanna’s, which are all afflicted by the Hanna Andersson Eye-Watering Color Combo Syndrome. Simple’s Weegee, like Simple’s adult shoes, is made from eco-friendly materials, in this case suede from an eco-certified tannery, recycled plastic and natural latex, and a soft, plushy organic cotton fleece lining. They’re washable, comfy, and almost as soft as your infant’s tiny feet.

Simple Shoes Infant’s Weegee, $34

Remember back when Crayola had a peach-colored crayon called “flesh?” Ah, unconscious racism is so funny! Crayola renamed that color “peach” in 1962 after the civil rights movement cranked up, but it’s still difficult to find shades that approximate human skin tones besides peach-colored.

Enter Lakeshore Learning Materials’ People Colors Crayons, a neat set of 24 colors in shades from alabaster to deepest brown, as befits a world where ethnicity has never been such a groovily intermixed stew. Lakeshore sells most often to schools and institutions but they sell to anyone on their website. The People Colors crayons are available in chunky sizes for tiny hands, or skinny sizes for older kids. If you buy a dozen sets there’s a bit of a price break. Outfit the whole school!

People Colors Crayons, $5.95-8.95

Behind the Autism Statistics, an essay in the Atlantic Monthly, asks a provocative question: given that children with autism can qualify for free, state-funded therapy, is it possible that children with autism-like symptoms (but not autism itself) are being deliberately misdiagnosed? And that such misdiagnoses are partially to blame for the precipitous rise in autism rates (up to 1 in 100 kids, says the CDC)?

“Ableism!” charges Sarah, an autistic woman who advocates for autism rights on her blog Cat in a Dog’s World. “The article is correct in pointing out the potential for misdiagnosis, and the fact that a lot of diagnostic gerry-mandering goes on because families want services,” writes Sarah, “Becker draws an artificial line between those she, parents, and/or the medical establishment consider to be ‘really autistic’ and those ‘normal’ children who just have a few quirky developmental issues. She’s fine with stigmatizing the ‘really autistic’ ones as broken and in need of repair, but foisting the label on a ‘normal’ child is apparently a great travesty.”

As Sarah points out, Becker’s conclusions seem to be drawn from the experiences of just one family: By a strange coincidence that family is the family profiled in Becker’s new film, Autistic-Like: Graham’s Story.