When it comes to sibling relationships, fairness rarely comes into play. If you’re the older sibling, you probably have quite a few grievances, like not being allowed to watch a PG-13 movie until you were actually 13, whereas little Bobby got to watch them at 10, having a 10 o’clock curfew which was pushed back to midnight for your younger sister, and the list goes on.

For the younger siblings reading this article, you can bask in the glory of that which is unjust: researchers at Hopkins’s sociology department recently published a study confirming this lack of equality in parental discipline.

The study, which was headed by Lingxin Hao, sought to determine whether parents punished older children more harshly for risky behavior, particularly dropping out of high school and having children in their teens.

Using game theory, Hao discovered that parents enforce stricter punishments on the oldest child so they can set an example for the younger siblings by indicating that they disapprove of such behaviors.

The greater the number of younger children in the family, the more likely are parents to enforce harsher punishments on the eldest child.

However, following through with these punishments declines with younger siblings when they become teenagers, as there are fewer children in the house and parents lose the energy and willpower to be the tough disciplinarians.

For only children, behavior mirrors that of the younger siblings: Parents cannot make an example of an only child by punishing her, so they punish her less often.

Compare Liesl, the oldest of seven in The Sound of Music (”You’re not going to tell Father, are you?”) with Veruca Salt, an only child in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (”I want an Oompa-Loompa and I want one NOW!”).

By measuring the the parental responses to teenage childbirth and dropping out of high school, Hao found that parents were more lenient toward younger siblings in these situations, providing them with more support into adulthood compared with their older brothers or sisters.

Furthermore, older children committed significantly fewer examples of such risky behaviors compared with their younger siblings. The common stereotype depicting the oldest child as the diligent, responsible one and the youngest as the class clown may actually have a scientific basis.

Even the declining number of children per family may contribute to the purported rise in spoiled kids. With fewer siblings around, discipline may be lacking because there are fewer younger kids who need an example.

So the next time you complain to your parents that they’re being unfair to you (if you’re older), pull out this article and prove you’re right.

Source: Johns Hopkins News-Letter, MD
http://tinyurl.com/4p2zuy

What does my baby know? When does my baby start to learn? How do you teach a baby?

Twenty-five years ago, the answers to these questions were unclear; there was much conjecture and many hypotheses on just what happens when infants interact with the people and objects in their environment. Observation and testing provided many tantalizing clues, but what was actually going on within those precious little heads still remained a mystery.

In recent years, new and nonintrusive brain-scanning technology has allowed scientists to watch in real time the brain-stimulation effects of a wide range of seemingly simple activities, beginning in the earliest weeks of life.

It turns out, infants quickly know an amazing amount of things: Just days after birth, they can recognize familiar faces, smells and sounds; soon after birth they can differentiate every vocal sound produced by human languages (and by six months they have already begun to sort out the common sounds of the languages they hear most frequently). At birth, they begin expressing rudimentary emotional expressions, and by two months they can express more complex emotions, such as sadness or frustration.

While these infants are literally growing smarter daily, their parents are often feeling the opposite effect; the addition of this little genius to the family has thrown their personal and family routines into disarray, priorities are now inverted and diapers and feeding cycles are an obsession they never believed they’d share. All parents need and deserve support in this time of transition.

What to do with this information is the challenge; for many parents in today’s two-wage-earner economy, just spending a few waking hours with their baby is a stretch — especially when it is the baby’s sleep schedule that determines when a waking hour occurs.

While we’d all like to give our littlest ones every advantage from day one, parents are overwhelmed with opinions, options and advice, much of it contradictory.

New parents can prepare to be their child’s first and best teacher by first acknowledging that none of us can do this alone. Connecting with their peers to share the challenges and opportunities, acknowledging their common needs and sharing resources, information and skills will build confidence and competence in those critical first few months of the adventure of parenting.

Source: Seattle Times, United States
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004371716_harryhoffman25.html

One train leaves Station A at 6 p.m. traveling at 40 miles per hour toward Station B. A second train leaves Station B at 7 p.m. traveling on parallel tracks at 50 m.p.h. toward Station A. The stations are 400 miles apart. When do the trains pass each other?

Entranced, perhaps, by those infamous hypothetical trains, many educators in recent years have incorporated more and more examples from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.)

“The motivation behind this research was to examine a very widespread belief about the teaching of mathematics, namely that teaching students multiple concrete examples will benefit learning,” said Jennifer A. Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State. “It was really just that, a belief.”

Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Though the experiment tested college students, the researchers suggested that their findings might also be true for math education in elementary through high school, the subject of decades of debates about the best teaching methods.

In the experiment, the college students learned a simple but unfamiliar mathematical system, essentially a set of rules. Some learned the system through purely abstract symbols, and others learned it through concrete examples like combining liquids in measuring cups and tennis balls in a container.

Then the students were tested on a different situation — what they were told was a children’s game — that used the same math. “We told students you can use the knowledge you just acquired to figure out these rules of the game,” Dr. Kaminski said.

The students who learned the math abstractly did well with figuring out the rules of the game. Those who had learned through examples using measuring cups or tennis balls performed little better than might be expected if they were simply guessing. Students who were presented the abstract symbols after the concrete examples did better than those who learned only through cups or balls, but not as well as those who learned only the abstract symbols.

Dr. Kaminski said even the effectiveness of using blocks and other “manipulatives,” which have become more pervasive in preschool and kindergarten, remained untested. It has not been shown that lessons in which children learn to count by using blocks translate to a better understanding of numbers than a more abstract approach would have achieved.

The Ohio State researchers have begun new experiments with elementary school students.

Other mathematicians called the findings interesting but warned against overgeneralizing. “One size can’t fit all,” said Douglas H. Clements, a professor of learning and instruction at the University of Buffalo. “That’s not denying what these guys have found, whatsoever.”

Some children need manipulatives to learn math basics, Dr. Clements said, but only as a starting point.

“It’s a fascinating article,” said David Bressoud, a professor of mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul and president-elect of the Mathematical Association of America. “In some respects, it’s not too surprising.”

As for the answer to the math problem at the top of this article, the two trains pass each other at 11 p.m. at the midway point between Stations A and B. Or, using the abstract approach, t = 4.

Source: New York Times, United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/science/25math.html?ref=education

Psychologist explores how our ability to function in adult relationships is directly connected to our mother factor legacy

Clinical Psychologist Stephan B. Poulter demonstrates in THE MOTHER FACTOR: HOW YOUR MOTHER’S EMOTIONAL LEGACY IMPACTS YOUR LIFE (Prometheus Books) that most of us will never understand the complex legacy imparted by our mothers or its far-reaching impact on our lives. The initial bond formed at birth becomes the foundation from which our emotional development, communication style, and personality type evolve through adulthood. No other relationship in our lives has the potential to shape us like the one we share with our mothers, and the more we understand the emotional components of it, the more choices and opportunities for relationship change and personal growth will be available to us.

Poulter defines the mother factor as our emotional development, functioning, and ability to form meaningful relationships in family life, in social life, and with intimate partners. It is an emotional template started with the mother-child relationship that influences our feelings of frustration, love, fear, and hope; our mothers’ style of parenting as the template for our emotional disposition and our core sense of who and what we are in the world; our emotional functioning as consciously and unconsciously shaped by our mothers.

The mother factor can work for or against us. Poulter shows that in order for it to work for us, we must understand the pervasive influence of our mothers. By focusing on our mother factor from many different angles and perspectives, Poulter strives to give us a more complete view of our own legacy. Once we have these new and crucial insights, we will have the personal power to make different choices, to let go of old self-defeating patterns, to take new and positive action, and to have a deeper sense of fulfillment.

“This entire investigation into your mother factor is for the sole purpose of gaining new, valuable insight and clarity, which will open more options to your life,” Poulter explains.

He also explores how our emotional connections in adult relationships are based on the “style” of our mothers. Poulter defines the five styles of mothering as:

* The Perfectionist Mother- whose family must look perfect in every way

* The Unpredictable Mother- whose ups and downs can create lifelong anxiety and depression in her son or daughter

* The “Me First” Mother- whose children come second or last

* The “Best Friend” Mother- who’s now in vogue but can wreak havoc

* The Complete Mother- who provides guidance and shows compassion to her child

THE MOTHER FACTOR makes clear that no matter what type of mother we have— and most mothers are a combination of the above—her style of mothering affects our lives in ways that should not be ignored. Through an investigation of the strengths, insights, and liabilities that derive from each mothering style, Poulter seeks to help us transcend the mysterious anger, anxiety, depression, and shame that we feel and achieve the kind of relationships we deserve. Dr. Poulter demonstrates how the internalized “rulebook” we inherit from our mothers is a very powerful force, as well. These unspoken rules govern our work, relationships, emotions, separation, and independence. Unless we become aware of the rules that guide our behavior, thoughts, and beliefs, we won’t have the ability to make our own choices.

Dani Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and President of The S.T.E.P. Group (School Placement and Educational Placement), says THE MOTHER FACTOR “brilliantly captured the reality that although we are products of our mothers’ legacy, we are not prisoners. Dr. Poulter not only offers insight, but also provides the tools to escape the fate of falling into maladaptive patterns. I would recommend this book to the masses, as we are all in relationships today that have been influenced by our mothers.”

Stephen B. Poulter, PhD (Los Angeles, CA), is the author of three previously published books including THE FATHER FACTOR, which was praised by NEWSWEEK and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, among other publications, and received widespread attention with author appearances in ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel FOX & FRIENDS. He has practiced as a clinical psychologist specializing in family relationships for twenty-four years.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/pb-hym042308.php

A friend of mine e-mailed me recently and said her brother is going to become a father soon, and could I recommend any good books on parenting for fathers? Now, when I was pregnant I remember my husband looking for the same thing, and even attempting to read a couple of popular titles. He ended up throwing most of them down in disgust. “This one assumes the only thing you care about is how soon you are gonna get laid after the baby is born and how hard it will be to stop going to strip clubs,” he complained (knowing this wouldn’t be a problem since we planned to raise our child in the back room of “Eve’s Playground”.)

A couple other books trotted out the irritating stereotype of the inept father, struggling to adjust to his new role while smiling sheepishly and remaining just hopeless when it comes to diapers. You know, that wacky dad, he may be good at watching football but he sure doesn’t know how to give a bottle. Ick. And many of the books for parents turned out to be more for moms, with a couple lines about dads not getting in the way, or exhorting fathers to be involved while implying it’s the last thing they want to do.

Now, it seems to me that the stereotype of the idiot, reluctant father is one that’s alive and well. Many dads I know get asked if they are “giving mom a break” when they go out in public with the kids, even though some of them are actually the primary caretakers. And even when dads demonstrate they are involved parents, there’s folks who encourage them to get back in their place. When our baby was about a week old, her dad and I went to the local birth-stuff store (hideous nursing pajamas, Boppys, birth amulets, that kind of thing) to buy a breast pump. The terrifying woman working showed us a few milking machines, and then my husband made the grand mistake of telling her we’d be using bottles as well as nursing soon because he also wanted to bond with the baby.

This woman went off on a tirade about nipple confusion and urged my husband to be, and I quote, “less selfish.” “This is mommy’s time with the baby,” she said. Um, yeah, no thanks, I like to share. Is it so hard to imagine that we might prioritize equal baby time? (By the way, no nipple confusion, unless you mean the phenomenon I experienced when I tried to latch my kid on in the dark, missed the target, and got a nasty hickey.)

Anyhow, the point of my rant is not to reopen old wounds and necessitate a best Men at Work best song post, but to ask if there are any good books for dads out there, books that don’t assume it’ll be a miracle if dad keeps the baby alive for three hours without maternal intervention.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?&entry_id=25837

Motherhood is a legitimate and valuable business, but there’s a twist. It has all of the makings of a real job - expectations, deadlines, periodic reviews of performance (self-inflicted and from friends and family), success and failure, management and supervision, unpredictable hours, demanding clients, and on and on. Like a businessperson, mothers are expected to be dedicated, high achievers day and night. We’re constantly juggling multiple tasks that all seem to be time-sensitive priorities, with clients (kids, husbands) demanding our physical, intellectual and emotional skills, sometimes all at once!

However - and this is the “twist” part - you’re working day and night at a job that people and society sometimes don’t recognize as having value. How many times have you heard the phrase “just a mom”? Nonetheless, you’re expected to do a great job, so what’s the secret to success? Treat the mechanics of the job like a business with systems, organization and method. And, like a professional, once you strip the emotion out of the equation while you’re managing the tactics, you have a much higher likelihood of laser focus and ultimate success.

This isn’t to say you need to wear high heels in the playroom, dictate chores via Power Point presentations, or be a robot when interacting with your kids. Give lots of hugs and kisses; relish precious moments; and create and spend as much quality time as is humanly possible. However, when it comes to running the business side (schedules, carpools, to-do lists), look for tips and tactics from the business world to guide the way. A business approach to motherhood increases productivity, efficiency and overall job satisfaction.

Motherhood is tough. It’s misunderstood and under-appreciated. Once you accept that it is indeed a business, you will not only see it increase in value and legitimacy, but you will be ready to make it the most successful operation you have ever managed in your life!

There are lots of great ways to get and stay organized:

-Create lists on paper or electronically by category to stay on task.

-Use post-bedtime minutes or hours to prepare for the next day.

-Don’t reinvent the wheel - brainstorm solutions with other parents. Share your best practices, and start the dialogue to get creative ideas from friends.

-Use teamwork to get the job done. Engage your kids in chores; reduce your workload while teaching them valuable life lessons.

-Strip the emotion out of the equation. Like I said earlier, it’s virtually impossible to do a good job with anything when you’re stressed or upset. Take a few deep breaths, find a quiet place and do your planning in a peaceful setting.

-Revisit your plan on a regular basis.

Most importantly, tell yourself you can do it all, and you will! Remember the childhood classic, The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper and Loren Long. A little attitude got that train chugging along. How many parents have read that to their little ones to urge positive attitudes? Be the great mom that can and will, and you’ll do it in stride.

Amy Kossoff Smith, Founder of The Business of Motherhood, is a nationally recognized Mompreneur who owns a Web site, www.BusinessofMotherhood.com, and blog, www.MomTiniLounge.com. Available 24/7, just like Moms, the Web sites offer parenting tips, resources, and a host of ways to manage the job of motherhood.

Source: MiamiHerald.com, FL
http://www.miamiherald.com/360/story/505156.html

Returning to work after maternity leave is one of the most difficult aspects of raising a baby, the results of a new nationwide survey of mothers indicate.

Of those surveyed, 29% cited returning to work after maternity leave as the most difficult aspect of raising a baby, while over half cited it as one of the most difficult aspects.

Not surprisingly, sleep deprivation was found to be the second most difficult aspect of having a baby. Other concerns faced by new parents included worrying about the health of a child and searching for quality childcare.

The results indicated that there are still a number of issues which parents would like to receive further information on. Altogether, 37% of respondents said they would like more information on child development, 30% wanted more information on caring for a sick baby, while 20% wanted more information on weaning.

When it came to the issue of bottle or breastfeeding, an almost equal number of respondents were in favour of each option. A significant number meanwhile opted for a combination approach, suggesting that many mothers no longer feel tied into making an ultimate choice and feel comfortable practising both bottle and breastfeeding.

However when it came to choosing the method of feeding, people with influence, such as healthcare professionals, family and friends, were found to play a large role in the decision making process.

Among those who chose to bottlefeed their child, the most important factor behind the decision was the return to work.

Meanwhile a number of factors were found to influence the decision to breastfeed, the main one being the health and wellbeing of the baby. Some mothers also opted for breastfeeding in the hope of developing a closer bond with their child in the early stages of life.

The survey was conduced by SMA Nutrition in association with Rollercoaster.ie

Source: Irish Health, Ireland
http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=13443

Research is First to Describe How Neurons Interpret Different Words

You might be able to hear the difference, but to many children and adults, these words sound exactly the same. The problem isn’t that they can’t hear the sounds. The problem is that they can’t tell them apart.

One in 20 children in kindergarten has difficulties understanding speech that are not related to hearing or problems with their ears. The reason is that speech discrimination is a problem solved in the brain, not in the ear. How does the brain process speech sounds? Very little was known, until now.

Enter Dr. Michael Kilgard and Crystal Engineer. Kilgard is a neuroscientist in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. His lab is one of the few in the world that studies how individual neurons process speech stimuli. Engineer is one of Professor Kilgard’s doctoral students. Together they conducted a study to provide the first-ever description of how speech sounds are processed by neurons in the brain. This insight may offer a new approach to treating children with speech processing disorders.

“Now that we’ve cracked the door on this important problem, we should be able to understand the neural basis of many common speech processing disorders and use this information to develop new treatments,” said Dr. Kilgard.

The study is part of Engineer’s dissertation, “Cortical activity patterns predict speech discrimination ability,” and will be published in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience, the top research journal in the field of neuroscience. The advance, online publication of the study is now available on the Nature Neuroscience Web site.

This research is groundbreaking for a number of reasons. Prior studies have used a synthetic voice and tested the response to only a few words. Engineer and Kilgard had a much broader scope. They tested all the consonant sounds in the English language using a human voice. Microelectrodes inserted into a rat’s auditory cortex enabled the researchers to capture the patterns of neural activity generated by each consonant with incredible precision. Recording techniques that can be used with human subjects (such as MRI and EEG) lack the precision to track the activity of individual neurons.

The recordings showed that contrary to prior belief it’s not the quantity of neurons that fire in response to a speech sound that is important. It is which neurons are firing and exactly when they are firing – down to the millisecond – that is critical.

Based on the patterns of activity shown in the neural recordings, Kilgard and Engineer believed they could predict the rats’ ability to discriminate the speech sounds. They hypothesized that speech sounds that generate similar patterns of neural activity would be impossible for the brain, and thus the rat, to tell apart. In contrast, speech sounds that generate dissimilar patterns would be easy for rats to tell apart.

To test their theory, they trained rats to press a lever in response to some speech sounds and not others. Although rats can’t talk and certainly don’t have language, the new study reveals that rats can easily hear the difference between most speech sounds. The auditory system in rats and many other animals are surprisingly similar to humans’.

For example, the neural responses for the words dad and sad are very different. (See video.) As expected, rats can easily distinguish between these two words. The neural responses for the words rad and lad are very similar. Not surprisingly, rats, like many children, find it very difficult to differentiate between these two words.

The neural patterns explain the rats’ ability to differentiate between different speech sounds. “Our study is the first to tie the perception of speech sounds to the neural response of the same sounds,” said Engineer.

So, they’ve cracked the code, now what? The implications are huge. The perception of speech sounds is important because these are the acoustic building blocks of language. Scientists couldn’t begin to isolate the problems with speech and hearing disorders until they understood how speech sounds are normally processed in the brain.

Already, one of the most cited researchers in the world on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change, Kilgard has big plans for his UT Dallas students and lab. He not only tackles ambitious topics in neuroscience, but in the process, he creates hands-on opportunities for his students at every level to get involved. This is what inspired Engineer to pursue her Ph.D.

“Dr. Kilgard encourages undergraduates to follow their interests. They have the rare opportunity to initiate and run their own projects and publish in prestigious journals. If it weren’t for these opportunities, I wouldn’t have gone on to graduate school,” said Engineer. She has worked with Kilgard since 2003, as an undergraduate, and expects to complete her Ph.D in August.

The emphasis on student involvement is illustrated by the number and diversity of the authors listed on the Nature Neuroscience study. Engineer and Kilgard’s research team included master’s students Claudia Perez and Helen Chen; undergraduates Ryan Carraway and Kevin Chang; and Ph.D. students Amanda Reed, Jai Shetake and Vikram Jakkamsetti.

“This paper in Nature Neuroscience is a great testimony to the level of graduate education students receive at UT Dallas. Dr. Kilgard is a wonderful mentor who helps students develop into independent researchers,” said Dr. Bert Moore, dean of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. “We are proud of both Crystal and Mike for this exciting research.”

Source: University of Texas at Dallas, TX
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2008/04/23-001.php

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should get careful cardiac evaluation and monitoring – including an electrocardiogram (ECG) – before treatment with stimulant drugs, a new American Heart Association statement recommends.

The scientific statement on Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents with Heart Disease Receiving Stimulant Drugs is published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In 1999, concerns over potential cardiovascular effects of psychotropic drugs, especially tricyclic antidepressants, but including stimulants, prompted an American Heart Association Scientific Statement: Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents Receiving Psychotropic Drugs. However, no specific cardiovascular monitoring was recommended for the use of stimulant medications. Warnings from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about stimulant medications and public concern for the safety of using them have prompted the current statement.

Studies have shown that stimulant medications like those used to treat ADHD can increase heart rate and blood pressure. These side effects are insignificant for most children with ADHD; however, they’re an important consideration for children who have a heart condition. Certain heart conditions increase the risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD), which occurs when the heart rhythm becomes erratic and doesn’t pump blood through the body.

Vetter also said doctors should evaluate children and adolescents already taking these medications if they were not evaluated when they started the treatment.

If heart problems are suspected after the evaluation, children should be referred to a pediatric cardiologist. Once stimulant treatment begins, children should have their heart health monitored periodically, with a blood pressure check within one to three months, then again at routine follow-ups every six to 12 months.

“Children can have undiagnosed heart conditions without showing symptoms,” Vetter said. “Furthermore, a child’s body changes constantly, with some conditions not appearing until adolescence.”

If the initial ECG was taken before age 12 years, it may be useful to do a repeat ECG after the child is over age 12 years, the statement says.

Widespread use of ECGs to detect heart abnormalities, including screenings for competitive athletes, is not routinely recommended by the American Heart Association. However, the writing group found using ECG screening in this specific population of children prescribed ADHD medication is medically indicated and reasonably priced. That said, however, lack of an ECG shouldn’t mean that kids who need ADHD treatment can’t get it.

“While we feel that an ECG is reasonable and helpful as a tool to identify children with cardiac conditions that can lead to SCD, if, in the view of their physician, a child requires immediate treatment with stimulant medications, this recommendation is not meant to keep them from getting that treatment,” said Vetter, who added that some children may not have access to a pediatric cardiologist who can evaluate an ECG or perform a cardiology consultation.

In 2003, an estimated 2.5 million children took medication for ADHD. Surveys indicate that ADHD affects an estimated 4 percent to 12 percent of all school-aged children in the United States, and it appears more common in children with heart conditions. Studies report that, depending on the specific cardiac condition, 33 percent to 42 percent of pediatric cardiac patients have ADHD, Vetter said. The number of undiagnosed children with heart conditions is unknown as routine heart screening is not performed, but Vetter said that a recent pilot study she presented at the American Heart Association’s 2007 Scientific Session indicated that up to 2 percent of healthy school aged children had potentially serious undiagnosed cardiac conditions identified by an ECG.

Data from the FDA showed that between 1999 and 2004, 19 children taking ADHD medications died suddenly and 26 children experienced cardiovascular events such as strokes, cardiac arrests and heart palpitations. Since February 2007, the FDA has required all manufacturers of drug products approved for ADHD treatment to develop Medication Guidelines to alert patients to possible cardiovascular risks.

Future studies are necessary to assess the true risk of SCD in association with stimulant drugs in children and adolescents with and without heart disease, Vetter said. However, studying SCD associated with drugs is difficult because the government’s reporting system is voluntary, which means local data on these types of deaths isn’t always reported nationally.

A registry of SCD events is necessary for further investigating this issue, the writing committee said. Such a registry would allow for a more accurate understanding of SCD, including the true incidence of it and the potential effectiveness of universal ECG testing and pre-participation screening questionnaires.

The statement writing committee said its recommendations are not intended to limit the appropriate use of stimulants in children with ADHD.

“Our intention is to provide the physician with some tools to help identify heart conditions in children with ADHD, and help them make decisions about the use of stimulant medications and the follow-up of children who take them,” Vetter said. “The goal is to allow treatment of ADHD, while attempting to lower the cardiac risk of these products in susceptible children.”

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/aha-cwa041808.php

Sharon Rechter remembers the day four years ago when a friend dropped by for lunch.

“She had one baby, two bottles, three diapers and five baby DVDs,” Rechter, now 32, says. “Not having children then, I wasn’t familiar with baby DVDs, and I asked her what they were. She said with kind of a straight face, `They make my baby smarter.’”

“I said, `How do you know?’ and she said, `Because it says so on the box.’”

Rechter had her doubts. Intrigued, she and her partner, Guy Oranim, investigated the $1.5 billion baby-DVD industry and discovered “it was not supervised by anybody. You and (I) could take my 1-year-old, video her playing with a puppy, put classical music in it and claim it was educational.”

She also learned there was nothing like it on television. Not on the Public Broadcasting System _ “Barney” and “Dora the Explorer” skew to an older demographic _ not on the Cartoon Network, and not in any of the “family blocks” on network television.

Seeing a niche with a ready market of consumers, Rechter and Oranim founded BabyFirstTV, a subscription-based network available via satellite (channel 293) and cable for $4.99 a month. Its programs air 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are targeted to children ages 6 months to 3 years.

Did you just shudder?

Or did you reach for the phone to call DirecTV?

Lots of adults have done both.

Since its launch on Mother’s Day 2006, BabyFirstTV has found its way to 30 countries, making the network available to some 80 million homes. A DVD line of the programming is coming to stores soon.

Of the 500 hours of content on the network now, “80 percent we produce ourselves,” Rechter says.

That programming has features unique to the network that are intended to assure parents that the programming isn’t harmful. For one thing, there are no commercials on the network. For another, all of the “shows” _ really two- to-seven-minute segments _ are signed off on by chief educational adviser Arthur Prober, a doctor of educational psychology; and a self-regulatory review board including pediatricians, authors of parenting books and others.

“If they don’t like it, we don’t show it,” she says. “Believe me, we’ve spent a lot of money on things that haven’t aired.”

POSITIVE EFFECTS QUESTIONED

Still, the general idea of parking babies in car seats on the floor in front of a television troubles childhood-development professionals. The American Academy of Pediatrics says simply, “Don’t do it!” (exclamation theirs).

“Any positive effect of television on infants and toddlers is still open to question, but the benefits of parent-child interactions are proven. Under age two, talking, singing, reading, listening to music or playing are far more important to a child’s development than any TV show.”

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood added BabyFirstTV to a suit filed with the Federal Trade Commission a month after the network launched, complaining that it _ as well as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby line of DVDs _ were falsely advertising educational benefits without evidence.

In December, the FTC found in favor of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, and this year, Walt Disney Video, which produced Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein, stopped advertising the programs as educational. The FTC’s findings would apply to BabyFirstTV and “any marketer of products claimed to provide educational or developmental benefits to children under 2.”

BabyFirstTV still labels itself as “a brand-new educational tool.” They have reports that 3-month-olds are tuning in, but they stick by their 6-month start age because “that’s the age where a child can really follow from an eye-development perspective, and it’s the recommendation of our pediatricians.”

To fulfill their commitment to parents that the programming will be beneficial and interactive, says Rechter, programming on BabyFirstTV “comes with parenting subtitles so they don’t interfere with the child’s viewing but help mom interact. For example, if you see a red ball bouncing on the screen, it would say to you as a dad, `Ask what color is the ball?’.”

The network’s on-air logo is color-coded to represent “which educational aspect is being taught,” she says. “So when you are watching on the screen, the flower will be only one color, let’s say blue, and that means to mom we are now teaching numbers. Again, that’s to promote interaction between mom and the baby.”

PROGRAMMING FOR DIFFERENT AGES

Because children of various stages of development will be tuning in, the programming is developed so it is interesting to different age groups within the demographic, she says. “Say we have a sand painting segment, so you see the hand painting in the sand and you hear classical music; if you’re a 3-month-old, we’re training your eye movement and showing you contrast of colors and movement and music; to a 1-year-old, we’re drawing a horse and giving you another way to learn the word `horse’; to a 3-year-old, it’s a guessing game.”

At night, when all good babies should be sleeping through until morning, BabyFirstTV goes into a drowsy mode: It’s all kaleidoscopic images, videos of dangling mobiles and fish swimming in a tank, accompanied by soothing classical music.

“In February we had a technical issue with DirecTV and they got hundreds of calls at 2 in the morning asking, `Where is BabyFirst?’ That just shows people are watching.”

Source: RedOrbit, TX
http://tinyurl.com/47tf8y