On Parenting
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6 Ways Parents Can Help Kids Cope With Social Cruelty
Continue reading… 7 CommentsKids can be incredibly cruel to one another, but parents can help minimize the pain. That's the reassuring message from Carl Pickhardt, a clinical psychologist in Austin who recently wrote Why Good Kids Act Cruel: The Hidden Truth About the Pre-Teen Years (Sourcebooks, $14.99). Though Pickhardt's book is aimed at tweeners, I found his book helpful as the mom of a first grader already faced with "I'm not inviting you to my birthday party."
I called up Pickhardt for firsthand advice and to ask him why he focused on the middle-school years, when social cruelty knows no age restrictions. "It's not that you don't get it in childhood," Pickhardt says. "It's just that the most damaging point is in middle school. The kids are right in the midst of this developmental change from childhood to adolescence. Combine that with self-awareness and striving for social place. It can be really devastating." Kids who don't feel safe at school can't concentrate on academics, and nobody wants to see a child suffer.
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4 Reasons More Recess Helps Kids Do Better in School
Continue reading… 3 CommentsThere's one thing that's almost guaranteed to make your child do better in school: more recess. Not only do children do better academically if they get outside to play, but they have fewer behavior problems. That's the word from none other than the principals of America, who know all there is to know about bad behavior at school.
I write this having just returned from a stint as recess volunteer at my daughter's elementary school, where I zipped up coats, told a half-dozen first-grade boys they needed to split up for five minutes because I was tired of seeing them try to rip each other's arms off, and talked with another young lad who was heartbroken because the girl of his dreams refused to play with him. Despite this, the playground was a happy scene, with children running, shouting, throwing balls, and generally being rowdy on a sunny winter's day.
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Vaccine Study Retracted, and Causes of Autism Remain Elusive
Continue reading… 17 CommentsIn 1998, the medical journal The Lancet published a study suggesting that the childhood MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine was tied to autism. On Tuesday, the journal retracted the study, saying in an editorial that key aspects of the paper—in which Andrew Wakefield reported that 12 children he studied had experienced a sudden onset of autism symptoms after getting MMR shots—were false.
This came after years of controversy surrounding the study and after last week's conclusion by Britain's General Medical Council that Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research. Among the findings: Wakefield didn't randomly choose the children studied, he subjected children to painful and unnecessary tests, and he was paid by lawyers for parents who thought their children had been harmed by the MMR vaccine. (Wakefield, who now works for a clinic in Texas that sells autism treatments, disputed that finding, calling it "unfounded and unfair.") British journalist Brian Deer has cataloged other problems with the study, including records indicating that the children's autism symptoms did not coincide with the MMR shot.
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Digital Kids: Dumber and More Distractable? Or Do Kids Learn Better Online?
Continue reading… 6 CommentsI'm still reeling over the recent news that, on average, American kids spend 7.5 hours a day with electronic media—and that's not even counting texting! If you're wondering how this affects how our kids live and how our families function, check out the wide-angle view in tonight's Frontline documentary, "Digital Nation." Among the show's wake-up calls:
*College students are doing worse at absorbing information from their lectures and reading because they're constantly multitasking with laptops and cellphones, according to David Jones, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who has tested his students' comprehension.
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Online Tool Helps Parents Manage Kids’ Sleep Problems
Continue reading… 1 CommentChildren's sleep problems are among the big headaches of parenthood. So I was glad when I crossed paths two weeks ago with Ben MacNeill, a Web designer in Raleigh, N.C., who offers parents one way of figuring out how to get a child on a sane sleep schedule: the Trixie Tracker. This online database lets you record your child's sleep patterns, and then it charts them using nifty graphs, a dashboard, and a daily sleep summary. "Once you find out what your baby's natural rhythms are, you aren't going to fight those rhythms," says MacNeill, a confessed data geek. "It augments your parental instincts." Not to mention helping to compensate for a parent's sleep-deprivation-induced memory loss.
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Mixed-Handed Kids May Struggle With ADHD, Learning Problems
Continue reading… 5 CommentsBeing ambidextrous may not be as neat as it sounds; children who are mixed-handed are more apt to struggle with learning and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study in Pediatrics. It found that ambidextrous children were twice as likely to have difficulties with language and school at age 8 as were right-handed or left-handed children. And mixed-handed kids were more likely to have symptoms of ADHD in adolescence, particularly if they had other behavioral problems.
Being mixed-handed doesn't mean a child is destined to have difficulties. But parents of an ambidextrous child might want to be aware that if there's any sign of trouble, child may need evaluation for learning problems or ADHD and extra help along the way in school. The study assessed 7,871 children in Finland at ages 7 to 8 and age 16. A little more than 1 percent of those studied—87 kids—were ambidextrous.
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3 Ways to Find Obesity Treatment That Works for Your Child
Continue reading… 1 CommentOne third of American children are overweight or obese, a health risk that increases the odds of heart disease, diabetes, and other killers. Need more convincing that being overweight threatens children's health? A report just out from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 20 percent of American teenagers have abnormal cholesterol levels.
Given these dismal numbers, the public-health folks are doubling down on efforts to prevent and treat childhood obesity. Earlier this week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended for the first time that all children be screened for body mass index, as my colleague Katie Hobson reported. And first lady Michelle Obama is about to launch her own intiative against child obesity, emphasizing "common-sense, innovative solutions."
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5 Ways to Make Kids’ Media Use Safe and Healthy
Continue reading… 2 CommentsThe children of America spend 7½ hours a day plugged in to their phones and iPods and MP3 players, gaming, or otherwise engaged with electronic media. That astonishing number, up more than an hour from the last time the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed children's media use five years ago, raises big questions about how our children live and whether that plugged-in life is healthful or wise.
Here are some key findings from the Kaiser survey, which polled 2,002 children ages 8 to 18:
*Mobile media is driving the trend towards increased media use. In five years, the proportion of children with cellphones has risen from 39 percent to 66 percent, and iPod/MP3 player use has risen from 18 percent to 66 percent. Kids now spend more time watching TV, listening to music, and playing games on their phones than they do talking on them. (Texting wasn't included in the survey numbers, oddly enough.)
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3 Ways to Help Teenagers Get More, Better Sleep
Continue reading… 7 CommentsIf your teenagers are cranky, distracted, and disorganized, it may well be because they're not getting enough sleep during the week. And sleeping in on weekends doesn't solve the problem.
The latest contribution to the growing pile of evidence showing that teenagers are being seriously shortchanged found that just 10 percent of adolescents are getting the optimal 10 hours of shut-eye a night. (Given that the high school bus rumbles through my neighborhood at 6:45 am, I'm not surprised.)
Who's least likely to get enough sleep? The survey of students across the nation, published in this month's Journal of Adolescent Health, found that those most likely to miss out on sleep are female, black, and/or in the higher grade levels. That last one's not surprising, considering how the homework piles up in junior and senior years of high school.
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Cadmium in Kids’ Jewelry: 3 Ways to Stay Safe
Continue reading… 11 CommentsCadmium is an extremely toxic heavy metal. So what the heck is it doing in children's jewelry?
Children's jewelry was supposed to get safer after a federal ban on the use of toxic lead in charms and jewelry went into effect last year. But it's not illegal to make children's products out of cadmium, despite the fact that it's clearly dangerous. And now cadmium has shown up in inexpensive children's jewelry, barely one month after a scare that Zhu Zhu Pets, the "it" toy of the Christmas season, were contaminated with antimony. (The Zhu Zhu Pets turned out to be OK.)
The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has launched a probe of this new cadmium-tainted bling, and politicians are rushing to extend the federal ban on lead in children's products to include cadmium. But in the meantime, parents are left wondering once again whether common and popular children's products are safe. The tainted pieces in this latest investigation were bought at stores including Walmart, Claire's, and a Dollar N More store. Almost all the charms were imported from China.
