A visiting international childhood expert says children should watch no television in the first two years of their lives.

The director of the Centre on Media and Child Health at the Harvard Medical School, Dr Michael Rich, says there is little benefit in putting a child under the age of two in front of a TV screen.

“There is no scientific evidence that children under the age of about 30 months, two-and-a-half years, can learn much of anything other than fairly rote imitation or mimicry from an electronic screen,” he told ABC radio’s The World Today program.

“What we know is that at least for national data from the United States that children under the age of two on average use electronic games for about an hour, a little over an hour a day,” he said.

“[We know] that 26 per cent of them have a television in their bedrooms and that it is very much integrated into their daily lives, largely in the format of parents using the television as an electronic babysitter.”

Dr Rich says TV screens do not provide the kind of stimuli most optimal for brain development.

“The best things are interaction with other human beings face to face, manipulating the physical environment, stacking up blocks, trying to get a raisin in your mouth and open-ended creative problem-solving sort of play,” he said.

“So a blank piece of paper and a crayon or a piece of clay to play with.”

Dr Rich says television and other media consumption should be restricted to about two hours a day for teenagers.

“It is really the school age years where kids start watching television on their own and actually teenagers, the data shows, use television less than school age kids,” he said.

“They start using more music and online media rather than television.

“But frankly there is no reason why young people, who have otherwise rich lives and homework to do and sleep to get, need to get more than an hour or two at most of media time each day.”

Source: ABC Online, Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/06/2412591.htm

Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their vegetables may need to take a hard look at their own eating habits, new research suggests.

The findings, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggest that even very young children do not indiscriminately reach for candy when given the chance. Instead, they seem to already be forming food preferences — potentially lasting ones — based on their parents’ shopping carts.

“The data suggest that children begin to assimilate and mimic their parents’ food choices at a very young age, even before they are able to fully appreciate the implications of these choices,” write the researchers, led by Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

That, the researchers say, means that the grocery store can be like a classroom, where parents teach their children that foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains take priority over snacks and desserts.

For the study, Sutherland’s team had 120 children aged 2 to 6 years old each take a turn in a play grocery store. The children were told they could buy anything they wanted out of 133 items: “healthier” foods included fruits, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, bread and milk; “less healthy” items included desserts, candy, potato chips, soda and sugary cereals.

Parents completed questionnaires on how often they bought specific foods and beverages. All said they brought their children with them on grocery store trips.

Most of the children, the researchers found, bought some sugary, salty treats; on average, their carts were filled with equal parts healthy and unhealthy items.

Giving preschoolers a taste for healthy foods, the researchers add, could ultimately make it easier for them to keep up a lifetime of smart eating.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A26J920081103

The number of children who take medication for chronic diseases has jumped dramatically, another troubling sign that many of the youngest Americans are struggling with obesity, doctors say.

The number of children who take pills for type 2 diabetes — the kind that’s closely linked to obesity — more than doubled from 2002 to 2005, to a rate of six out of 10,000 children. That suggests that at least 23,000 privately insured children in the USA are now taking diabetes medications, according to authors of the new study in today’s Pediatrics.

Doctors also saw big increases in prescriptions for high cholesterol, asthma and attention deficit and hyperactivity. There was smaller growth for drugs for depression and high blood pressure.

“We’ve got a lot of sick children,” says author Emily Cox, senior director of research with Express Scripts, which administers drug benefit programs for private insurance plans. “What we’ve been seeing in adults, we’re also now seeing in kids.”

Type 2 diabetes was once known as adult-onset. But Cox says her records show kids as young as 5 being treated with prescription diabetes drugs.

Cox based her study on prescription records of nearly 4 million children a year, ages 5 to 19, covered by Express Scripts. She says her findings may not apply to the 40% of children who are uninsured or covered by government health plans.

Unless these children make major changes — such as eating healthier and exercising more — they could be facing a lifetime of illness, Cox says.

“These are not antibiotics that they take for seven to 10 days,” Cox says. “These are drugs that many are taking for the rest of their lives.”

Cox couldn’t explain one surprising finding: Most of the increase in drugs for diabetes, attention deficit/hyperactivity and depression was seen in girls. The gender gap was most striking in diabetes: While the number of boys taking medication grew by 39%, the number of girls using them climbed by 147%, Cox found.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-11-03-kids-meds_N.htm

Research shows that a walk in the park can be just as effective as drugs such as Ritalin for children with ADHD or excess energy levels.

It’s been a brilliant week off. Your children have adored Halloween; they’ve loved trick or treating, and have gorged themselves on sweets and goodies all week. You don’t mind. Isn’t that what the autumn break is all about? You may have noticed, though, that all the sugar has made your children hyper. It may have been tough getting them to relax and get ready for sleep.

And now that they’re back in their normal routine you need to calm them down a little, so they can concentrate through the school day.

Returning to a healthy diet helps. But what if your children remain hyper? What if their natural energy level borders on ADHD?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a growing problem. Drugs such as Ritalin help ADHD children; and the number of children prescribed them has doubled in the UK since 2002.

New research, though, shows that there’s a more simple solution. And that a walk in the park is just as effective as a daily dose of drugs.

Walking

Researchers at the University of Illinois took 17 hyperactive children on a walk, dividing them between the park, a town centre and a residential area. They didn’t take their drugs that day, but those walking in the park showed hugely improved concentration. In fact, the effect was the same, or even better than the effect of their normal drugs.

“As little as 20 minutes in a park could potentially buy you an afternoon, or a couple of hours to get homework done,” said researcher Andrea Faber Taylor. And if it works for hyperactive children, think of the benefit to the normally boisterous child?

It’s something that Josephine Lara, mum to Thomas, 5, Max, 3, and Daisy, 8 months, has noticed.

“The boys have so much energy and sugar definitely makes them worse,” she says. “But if we’ve had a good walk, they are always calmer. I try to keep the TV off too. It can calm them down initially, but in the long run it makes them more hyper.

“The last Friday before Halloween the school said the children had eaten sweets all afternoon. I’d arranged to bring the boys to a playground. We were there for an hour and I didn’t have any problems with them. The parents who went straight home said their children were climbing the walls.

“We have family walks when we can. We’ll walk on a beach at Skerries or LoughShinny. Or we’ll go to a playground; there are some amazing ones around here; at Ardgillan Castle, Malahide and at Newbridge.

“We walk to school in the mornings. It’s not far and it’s a good start to the day. They’re allowed to run around at school — the Lusk Educate Together, so Thomas gets a good lot of exercise. And at home, if they’re hyper, I’ll send them out into the garden. That always helps.”

TOP REASONS FOR CHILDREN TO EXERCISE (From ACE- American Authority on Exercise)

1. Children who exercise are more likely to keep exercising as an adult.

2. Exercise helps children achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

3. Regular physical activity helps build and maintain strong, healthy muscles, bones and joints.

4. Exercise aids in the development of important interpersonal skills.

5. Exercise improves sleep.

6. Research shows that exercise promotes improved school attendance and enhances academic performance.

7. Children who exercise have greater self-esteem and better self-image.

8. Exercise prevents or delays the development of many chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Source: Herald.ie, Ireland
http://www.herald.ie/lifestyle/health-beauty/better-than-ritalin-1518888.html

Is our generation too heavily dependent on the Internet? According to a recent Wi-Fi Alliance and Wakefield Research survey, almost three out of five students would not go to a college that does not offer free wi-fi. In fact, “nine out of 10 college students in the United States say wi-fi access is as essential to education as classrooms and computers,” says the study.

Some scientists and writers suggest that spending a great deal of time on the Internet can significantly shorten a person’s attention span. The same survey states, “More than half [of the students surveyed] have checked Facebook or MySpace and sent or received e-mail while using their laptop in class.” I have seen, in my lecture classes, no shortage of high-achieving and academically motivated Brandeis students surreptitiously checking Facebook instead of taking notes. The temptation is strong. Is the Internet so addictive it prevents even the best students from concentrating in class?

The Atlantic Monthly recently published a popular article by Nicholas Carr titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Internet allows us a vast range of instantly accessible information; research used to entail hours spent in libraries poring over books, articles, newspaper archives and so on. Now we can click-click-click our way through the Internet, jumping from Web page to Web page, skimming through information from one hyperlink to another. In the article, Carr describes the effect years of doing so has had on his way of thinking: “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

People who are used to reading on the Internet might find it difficult to concentrate on the linear narrative of a book. A New York Times article states: “Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers.” Despite all the obvious advantages of having so much information at our fingertips, it is possible that the format in which it’s presented erodes our reading skills.

In general, it seems to me that spending so much time in the virtual world is slowly turning us into zombies. We are increasingly disconnected from real life. We spend less time outdoors or engaging in physical activity. We are so immersed in our technology we end up limiting our interactions with other people. Talking to friends on Facebook is not the same as talking to them in person. Talking to friends you’ve “met” on the Internet but not in real life doesn’t count at all. The more that technology advances, it seems, the more isolated we become; take the example of Netflix. Even the drive to the video store and the basic interaction with the guy behind the counter is no longer a necessary part of the process of renting movies. We can get them mailed to us directly, so we don’t even need to leave the house and make that tiny effort.

We seriously need to reevaluate our priorities. Do we really need wi-fi so desperately that we’re willing to cross colleges off our lists just because they don’t offer it in restaurants, classrooms, parks, coffee shops, even in our cars? Large percentages of students, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, use the Internet in all these places.

Despite all its advantages, the Internet, when used so excessively, seems to impair our social skills and numb our brains. The survey even found that “If forced to choose, nearly half of respondents (48 percent) would give up beer before giving up Wi-fi.” For college students, that seems extreme.

Source: Justice, MA
http://tinyurl.com/5jcevc

Children who eat breakfast each day are half as likely to be obese as those who skip it, new research shows.

They eat less for lunch and tend not to snack between meals, experts say.

The study looked at 15,000 five year olds born in the first two years of the millennium who were weighed and measured.

It found children who were obese were about twice as likely not to eat breakfast as children of normal weight.

Researchers also found those with unemployed parents were almost three times as likely to go without breakfast as those whose mothers and fathers were both working.

The study found about one in five of the children was either overweight or obese when they started school. More than 17 per cent of girls and 13.5 per cent of boys were overweight and a further 6 per cent of girls and 5 per cent of boys were obese.

“It is also likely, of course, that parents who fail to give their children breakfast may be less organised about nutrition in general.”

But Prof Joshi, of the Institute of Education at the University of London, added that economic pressures, such as the inability to afford healthy food, do not appear to be key contributors to weight gain.

She said: “Poor children in our study were no more likely to be overweight and only very slightly more likely to be obese.”

Eating regular meals, other than breakfast, also appeared to have no influence on whether a child would be overweight or obese.

But the researchers did find an association between mothers’ education level and children’s weight. Just three per cent of the children of graduate mothers were obese, compared with eight per cent of youngsters whose mothers had no qualifications.

Dr Colin Waine, immediate past chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “”This confirms what we have suspected for some time that breakfast is a good way to start the day for all children and is associated with reduced obesity levels and also better performance at school.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/69zkck

Almost a third of British children suffer from back problems before the age of eight because they do not exercise or carry school bags that are too heavy, doctors have warned.

A survey of more than 1,200 children by the British Chiropractic Association highlights a dramatic increase in those suffering from the increase in “slouch potato” lifestyles.

Carried out to coincide with World Spine Day, it found that 32 per cent of six and seven year olds had suffered some kind of back problem, rising to 45 per cent of children by the age of 11.

This compared to 29 per cent of 11 to 18 year olds who complained of back pain in a 2002 survey.

The BCA blames a combination of lazier lifestyles and heavy school bags for the increase in cases at a younger age.

It found that 45 per cent of children spent the majority of their half terms playing computer games or watching TV, while a tenth of eight and nine year olds said they didn’t do any sport at all.

A total of 72 per cent of children said they carried around heavy books and sports equipment on their backs, but only a third said they wore their rucksack on both shoulders to distribute the weight evenly.

The study follows Irish research at two Dublin schools which found that 13 year olds were carrying nearly 6kg (13lbs), or an average of 12 per cent of their body weight, on their backs every day.

The BCA’s Tim Hutchful said the results were alarming, since children suffering from bad backs were likely to take their problems into adulthood.

He said that parents should take responsibility for their child’s development by encouraging them to go outside and exercise.

“We are in no doubt that lack of exercise is children’s number one enemy,” he said.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/4okmjs

When it comes to parenting, we Indians have a rare flair of feeding our kids with all kinds of nonsense. The tradition of such parenting has started taking its toll and families have started experiencing untold miseries triggered by their own kids.

Parents have always been role models for kids of all ages. This has been endorsed time and again, everywhere in the world. This is a similarity found in all cultures and when cultures communicate and exchange their niceties, naturally there will be polarisation in parenting too.

Howsoever hard and fast that polarisation might be, when it comes to real parenting, we Indians have a rare flair of feeding our kids with all kinds of nonsense, thinking that it is all for the children’s good. And the children, who have the rare faculty of not differentiating between what their parents are doing and what they are supposed to do, pick up wrong signals and precedents from a very early age, and become the chips of the old blocks by the time they come of age and be parents themselves.

The tradition of such parenting has started taking its toll, and families in this subcontinent have started experiencing untold miseries triggered by their own kids. It starts from basic human habits to telling lies and committing crimes. Eating too much, drinking, smoking, disclaiming and dishonouring, scaring and browbeating and so on goes the list.

However, our children pick up these evils, don’ts and lies the same way they chip down fatty Lays chips, cookies, wafers and other confectionaries. What is the price the modern nuclear family pays for this? What is the risk the kids come to shoulder when they come of age? How is this going to put the society to ransom in the long run? We parents hardly take time off to think about it. We are obsessed with the welfare of our kids, and we feed them with flat lies and fatty Lays alike. The consequences are manifold.

The kids become the replicas of their parents; with everything attached, both good and bad.

They take things for granted thinking that if parents do, it must be right. A kid grown with a lot of browbeating turns out to be a bully.

If the parents tell lies or break their promises, or fail to keep their word, the kids of such parents will also have the same traits in the long run.

When parents are not able to imbibe qualities that last for a lifetime, children pick up the worst qualities from other social agencies, and these qualities last for a lifetime and beyond in the form of familial ignominy.

Mothers force-feed their kids. They do it as if the kid is going to die if he skips a meal. This feeding tendency leaves the kid fed up with food. He or she resorts to eating junk and drinking deadly beverages.

If the need is for maintaining restraint, attitudinal balance, being responsible etc are not taught in the family, kids naturally grow into wanton boys and girls.

Commitments like caring for the weak, elderly and lonely, either in the family or in the society, have to be nurtured in the family ambience itself, and as and when there is an occasion for the parents to be committed and responsible, they have to be so in such a way that their kids pick up this lesson at an early age itself. But do we do this?

What the parents do is that give some lame excuses and lie right in front of their children to free themselves of their responsibilities.

When someone seeks help from our family, we have to help him or her according to the nature of the help and our limitations. Instead, many parents play hide and seek when someone approaches for help. Can we expect our kids to be different when they grow up?

It is unhealthy to eat out for long, and it is hazardous to eat junk food. How many parents are ready to shun such habits? How many new parents have the tolerance to teach their kids the need for maintaining a healthy diet regime?

We feed our kids with all the junk available in the market, and we boast of their chubby size, tastes and the nowhere seen talents and skills. And the kids in turn happen to grow up in a world of illusionary achievements and false prides. Can they ever be what they actually are? We spoil our kids the same way we toil ourselves for their welfare.

Television eats on our health, wealth and happiness. Why are our kids too tip-toeing the same line? They are put in the rut by their own parents.

Consumerism is taking us to new lows everyday; still we take our kids to supermarkets and stuff them with all types of nasty tendencies like buying things we don’t want, buying much more than what we want, eating things that are hazardous, and finally feeding them with a regular doses of ‘use and throw culture’.

No wonder, modern materialistic and monitory criteria that reflects our social, personal and moral values are meticulously copied by our offspring, and they transform themselves into chronic insensible figurines, symbolising falsehood, lies, greed, hypocrisy and snobbery; the dirty and disastrous signs of modern parenting.

It is investment all the way, and the talk of the family is all about returns. The power of money is equated with prestige; and eventually the finer lines that demarcate good and bad, vice and virtue and modesty and malice, truth and falsehood are made to look non-existent and meaningless.

Thus, a generation slowly gets deprived of those humane values that have had much greater sway on human civilisation and sustenance than any material or monetary possession ever had. The ugly face of modern parenting is visible in our families, day in and day out.

Will our kids ever be able to grow into beings of virtue and values?

Among us are innumerable parents who go that extra miles and ensure that their kids pick up good social, personal and cultural values from their parents themselves. There are parents who try to transform their kids into better beings than what the parents had been when they were kids. There are parents who dedicate their whole life carving a niche for their kids by the sweat of their blood. Some parents practice impeccable lifestyle so that their kids would follow their footsteps.

However, in a heterogeneous society like ours, their number is dwindling. Thanks to the pressures exerted by modern market, material and monitory forces, the alien cultures and civilisations that come to play in our society via our so-called modern world order, dictate new benchmarks. The consequences of this cultivated benchmarks of falsehood and felony are so ubiquitous that a little slice of it could be seen on the faces of our modern kids who are raised by lies and Lays alike: by their parents themselves.

Source: Merinews, India
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=144605

The University of Miami med school is one of the key research sites in a pioneering national study that will examine children’s health from birth to 21.

The University of Miami Medical School will be one of the primary research centers for a 25-year nationwide, pioneering study of children’s health, following potential mothers from before they’re pregnant to when their children reach 21.

The $3.4 billion National Children’s Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will track 4,000 children in four Florida counties — including Miami-Dade — and 100,000 nationwide. It will focus on 20 key children’s health issues, including autism, birth defects, heart disease, attention-deficit disorders and obesity.

”We believe it will be the largest study of pregnant women ever conducted — certainly in the United States,” said Dr. Peter Scheidt, director of the national study for the NIH. The NIH will create a national databank of health information on children.

”We won’t have to wait 21 years to benefit,” said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “We will release information at each step in the growth process, from pre-conception to 21.”

`THE WHOLE COUNTRY’

Dr. Steven Lipshultz, chairman of pediatrics at UM medical school and Florida principal investigator for the study, says the research will be more significant than the Framingham Heart Study, which has followed a Massachusetts town since 1948 and is seen as the basis for much of what is known about heart disease.

”That was just one Massachusetts town,” he said. “This will cover the whole country.”

Lipshultz estimates the study eventually will create up to 400 medical health jobs in Florida and $400 million of medical spending in Miami-Dade County. UM initially will receive $54.6 million from the NIH to lead the Florida portion of the project. UM will pay participants a range of fees, as yet undetermined.

Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Orange and Baker are the counties in Florida that will participate in the study — there are 105 counties nationwide.

Lipshultz said he hopes the program can help lift Florida from its ranking of 50th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in 13 child-health categories according to a May study by the Commonwealth Fund, a private group that studies healthcare issues.

Starting in 2010, if pilot efforts go well, UM researchers will recruit 4,000 families in the four counties.

”We will literally knock on 17,000 doors to get 1,000 children in Miami-Dade,” says Dr. Tracie Miller, associate chair of pediatrics at the UM med school and co-principal investigator of the study.

WATER SAMPLING

Other universities involved are Johns Hopkins University, Baylor College of Medicine, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Tulane, the University of California at Los Angeles and Vanderbilt.

The studies will follow women from before they conceive, sampling the water they drink, the air they breathe, the schools, shops and workplaces in which they spend time.

Doctors, nurses and medical researchers will look into genetics and environmental factors; psychologists will trace brain development factors that might cause dyslexia, learning disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Some of the key areas to be studied:

• Birth defects: Birth defects affect one in every 33 babies born in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They include heart defects, brain defects and spinal problems such as spina bifida. Birth defects account for more than 20 percent of infant deaths.

• Obesity: Studies by the Florida Governor’s Task Force on Obesity say 10 percent of Florida high school students and 11.5 percent of middle school students are overweight. They say 57.4 percent of Florida adults were overweight or obese, a 63 percent increase since 1986. Early blame was placed on lack of physical activity and poor eating habits.

• Heart disease: Reports by the Florida Department of Health say 39.7 percent of Florida residents said they had high cholesterol in 2005, up from 31 percent in 2001. The report said 26.9 percent engaged in no regular physical activity. And two-thirds of middle school students watched TV or sat at a computer screen for more than three hours a day.

• Autism: The CDC estimates that one in 150 8-year-old U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder, making up about 560,000 individuals from birth to 21. The number is up from previous decades, possibly because a broader definition of ASD. Some parents believe, despite disagreement from many doctors, that autism might be associated with childhood vaccinations.

The CDC says it does not believe there is a connection.

Says Lipshultz: “There’s no substitute for data.”

Source: MiamiHerald.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/712697.html

Breastfeeding for longer, cutting out TV and enlisting grandparents to babysit are among the keys to bringing up happy, healthy children, a new Federal Government-funded report shows.

The four-year study measured children’s physical, learning and cognitive development plus social and emotional functioning.

Federal Families, Housing and Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin released the report - Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children - in Sydney today.

The report shows infants aged three to 19 months had higher learning scores if they were cared for by a range of family and friends - including grandparents - rather than just their parents.

Ms Macklin said grandparents were the unsung heroes of the Australian family unit, providing a strong support base for families by lending a hand with day-to-day family life and influencing their grandchildren’s development.

“This new study demonstrates just what a critical role grandparents play in the development of children,” Ms Macklin told reporters at a daycare centre in inner-city Redfern.

Spending time with grandchildren, reading to them, cooking together and taking them shopping were simple interactions which made the difference, she said.

The only option better than getting grandma and grandpa to babysit was for the children to attend early education programs, the report says.

The study began in 2004 and more than 10,000 families agreed to take part.

Also indicated in the study was that mothers were still not breastfeeding exclusively for long enough.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recommends mothers breastfeed exclusively for at least six months, but while most of the mothers who had taken part in the study had breastfed, they had not done so for long enough, the results showed.

The majority of children had diets that did not meet nutritional guidelines and many preferred less physical activities.

The lack of breastfeeding also positively correlated to incidences of wheezing in infants and a strong prediction for asthma in children aged four to five.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who read more - alone or with a parent - and watched less TV tended towards better developmental scores across the board.

“We know from this study how important it is to a child’s development to … spend as much time as possible everyday reading and spending time playing with children,” Ms Macklin said.

The study also showed that six per cent of children studied lived in households that had been forced to skip meals or not pay bills in order to cope with growing financial stress over the past 12 months.

However, while financial stress had an adverse affect on the child’s development, overall income levels did not - meaning children growing up in affluent households were not necessarily better off than those growing up in poorer homes or neighbourhoods.

The Growing Up in Australia report is the first comprehensive national study of Australian children over time, Ms Macklin said.

Source: The Epoch Times
http://tinyurl.com/4m2nu8