ParentDish

Children Could Benefit from Medical Research, Study Says

Tom Henderson — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Babies, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Credit: Getty Images

You read about all these studies and research projects on ParentDish. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I wish scientists from Pennbrook University would do medical research on my child"?

Most parents overlook the possible benefit of children participating in medical research. How do we know? Guess what? There's been a study.

Researchers from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health surveyed parents earlier this year and found one in nine adults have participated in medical research -- compared with only one in 20 children.

A university press release also reports that 68 percent of adults are aware of medical research opportunities for themselves. However, 84 percent of parents are not aware of medical research opportunities for children.

So, c'mon, kids, who wants to play guinea pig? It's not as bad as it sounds.

"Medical research is the backbone of improving medical care. Without volunteers, medical research cannot move forward," Matthew Davis, an associate professor at the University of Michigan's medical school, says in the release.

Participation in research is essential to continued medical progress, Davis says.

Over the last 100 years, infant mortality in the United States has been reduced by 90 percent. Millions of deaths from diseases such as polio, diphtheria, pneumonia and influenza have been prevented by vaccines.

Children with life-threatening diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and diabetes now survive beyond childhood, into adult years.

All thanks to kids participating in medical research.

"Awareness about research opportunities, which is a necessary step before participation, is reasonably high among adults but strikingly low for children's research," Davis adds. "To improve participation rates among children, researchers and institutions evidently need to do a better job of getting the word out to parents."

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Cellphones Don't Raise Risk of Brain Tumors in Kids, Study Finds

Lesley Kennedy — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Research Reveals: Teens, Health

Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Put down that cell phone, child! It'll rot your brain and give you cancer!

No reason to put the fear of God into your iPhone-loving kid. We can't comment on the brain rot, but a new study does show that children who use cell phones have no greater risk of getting brain cancer than kids who don't use them, Reuters reports.

Researchers looked at brain tumor patients ages 7 to 19, to gauge their risk of getting cancer from cellphones, and found the patients weren't any more apt to be phone fanatics than the control subjects who were cancer-free, according to the news service.

"If mobile phone use would be a risk factor, you'd expect cancer patients to have a higher amount of usage," Professor Martin Roosli, who conducted the study, published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, tells Reuters. The research was partly funded by cellphone operators, the news service adds, although they had no part in the study's design, analysis or interpretation of data.

The World Health Organization said in May that cellphone use could increase the risk of some types of brain tumors, Reuters reports. But this study didn't find a connection.

"What we found was that there was no (significant) difference in the amount of use," Roosli tells the news service, adding that any risk "would be a really small risk."

Roosli tells Reuters future studies should look at longer-term use of cellphone use among kids.

"(This study) provides quite some evidence that use of less than five years does not increase the chance of a brain tumor, but naturally we don't have a lot of long-term users," he tells the news service.

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Parents' Attitude Affects Kids' Diabetes

Tom Henderson — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Special Needs, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Health

Credit: Getty Images

Kids with diabetes need to regulate their diets, monitor their blood-sugar levels and take the appropriate amount of insulin.

They also need parents with the right attitude.

Researchers at the Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel find that parenting styles and attitudes play a big role in how well teenagers manage their diabetes.

Internal Medicine News reports lead researcher Maayan Shorer and her colleagues defined three parenting styles:

Authoritative. This is characterized by clear limits on the child set by the parents in a caring, noncoercive manner.
Permissive. This is characterized by few efforts by the parents to direct and limit the child's behavior.
Authoritarian. This is characterized by a coercive, harsh and punitive approach and parental attempts to control the child's behavior.

Researchers looked at 100 adolescents, as well as 79 mothers and 63 fathers, and found an authoritative approach, especially by fathers, resulted in kids doing a better job managing their diabetes. On the flip side, kids did a lot worse when parents were either permissive or authoritarian.

The worst results came when kids picked up on a sense of helplessness, especially among mothers.

There are several morals to the story, researchers tell Internal Medicine News. One of the biggies is that dads need to get more involved.

"Unfortunately, our clinical experience along with the empirical evidence suggests that compared with mothers, fathers tend to take a too-small role in their child's diabetes management and exert fewer efforts at monitoring the child," Shorer says. "We believe fathers should be more engaged in their child's routine diabetes care, and to do so, specifically, by adopting an authoritative stance."

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Sneak Veggies Into Your Kids' Meals

Tom Henderson — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Nutrition: Health, In The News, Mealtime, Nutrition: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Nutrition: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Credit: AP

Can't get your kids to eat their veggies?

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have a cunning plan. They suggest you discreetly add broccoli, zucchini and all that other green stuff to kids' meals.

Reuters news service reports their research found kids get more vegetables that way. And, while most of us might detect puree of broccoli on our macaroni and cheese, the little rubes don't even seem to notice the difference.

"We think of it as not deception, but recipe improvement," Barbara Rolls, one of the researchers, tells Reuters. "In this group of kids, we got most of them meeting their daily vegetable requirements -- that's pretty amazing."

Although the study was done in day care centers, researcher Maureen Spill tells Reuters parents could easily pull the same stunt at home. All they need is a blender.

Rolls says the technique can even work on older but equally stubborn children ... like husbands.

Adding pureed vegetables into adults' meals meant they ate more veggies and fewer total calories, she adds. Most of them couldn't taste the extra veggies, either.

According to Reuters, researchers fed prepared meals to 40 kids ages 3 to 5 one day a week for three weeks. The meals looked the same each day -- zucchini bread at breakfast, pasta with tomato sauce at lunch and a chicken noodle casserole at dinner.

One day's worth of meals was prepared normally -- with a typical veggie in each entree. On the other two days, researchers added pureed cauliflower, broccoli, squash, zucchini and tomatoes to triple or quadruple every dish's dose of vegetables.

After each meal, researchers weighed the food to determine how much kids ate. The preschoolers were also allowed to eat non-doctored side dishes and snacks during the day -- including fruit, cheese and crackers.

Compared to the day when they ate standard meals, Reuters reports, kids almost doubled their total vegetable intake on the day they ate high-vegetable dishes.

"I would urge parents to try to get vegetables into their kids' meals wherever they can," Rolls tells Reuters. "This is an additional strategy that you put on top of exposing kids to real vegetables, eating the vegetables with the kids, (and) being persistent in exposing them to vegetables."

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Crossing the Street Can Be Risky for Kids With ADHD

Tom Henderson — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Special Needs, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens

Credit: Getty Images

Albert Einstein may have helped unlock the secrets of the universe, but something as simple as crossing the street might have been difficult for him.

It's really not that simple. There are some pretty complicated physics involved. For one thing, your body and your mind have to occupy the same point in the time-space continuum. Your body can't be at Fourth and Main while your brain is somewhere in the Pleiades star cluster.

Kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a similar problem, according to researchers in Alabama.

Because these kids are what we used to refer to less clinically as "absent-minded," researchers say, they sometimes make incorrect decisions about when to cross the street and how long it will take to the get to other side.

WebMD reports some 5 percent of the American population has ADHD, a behavioral condition marked by impulsiveness, hyperactivity and (seeming) inattention. They can actually be quite attentive. It just may be to last Saturday's episode of "Doctor Who" instead of looking both ways at the intersection.

That's the problem, according to research presented in the journal Pediatrics.

"I came in thinking that kids with ADHD probably won't look left and right before they cross, but they did display appropriate curbside behavior," Despina Stavrinos, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Injury Control Research Center, tells WebMD. "The big difference occurred in the outcome of cross."

Researchers looked at 78 children ages 7 to 10. They tested the kids' ability to cross streets using a simulated street scene with cars approaching from the left and right. All the children looked left and right before crossing and waited to cross.

But the 39 children with ADHD had more "close calls" with oncoming traffic and less time to spare when they reached the other side.

Medicating kids -- a popular response to ADHD -- might not help, Stavrinos tells WebMD. A lot of ADHD kids take meds in the morning, but they wear off by the afternoon. They also take "medication holidays" during the summer when they're outside more.

However, Stravinos adds studies of drivers with ADHD have shown that treatment can improve driving performance.

In the meantime, she tells WebMD, "parents may need to delay the age at which they allow children with ADHD to cross the street independently."

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'Molescular Scalpel' Offers Hope in Muscular Dystrophy Fight

Tom Henderson — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Credit: Getty Images

A "molecular scalpel" could help children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The gene for the protein dystrophin is damaged in people with the affliction, but the BBC in London reports a drug given to 19 children used a microscopic chemical "scalpel" to remove the damage and restore dystrophin production.

Leaders of Britain's Muscular Dystrophy Campaign tell the BBC the new drug offers "real hope" for victims of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which affects one in every 3,500 newborn boys.

The disease causes muscles to waste away rapidly through the victim's life, confining many children to wheelchairs before their 10th birthdays. The condition can fatal before the age of 30.

The BBC reports the instructions for making a protein are in the genetic code. However, those instructions can get garbled. Scientists have used stem cell and gene therapy research to find ways to introduce a functional dystrophin gene.

In this latest study, researchers tried to do the best they could with the damaged code. Researchers at the Institute of Child Health at University College London injected tailored pieces of antisense RNA to remove a piece of the genetic code allowing it to be matched up either side of the mutation.

In the trial, seven out of the 19 children had some degree of dystrophin protein production restored.

"The best result was 20 percent of normal dystrophin levels," lead researcher Francesco Muntoni tells the BBC. "That is quite remarkable considering the study was for 12 weeks.

"I've worked with patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy for many years and this is the first time we can say with confidence that we've made a significant breakthrough towards finding a targeted treatment."

However, he adds that the treatment was tailored to a specific mutation. It could not benefit everyone. He estimates only 13 percent of patients could be helped.

Nonetheless, Marita Pohlschmidt, director of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, tells the BBC the study is "quite a big deal."

"If we can change severe symptoms in Duchenne into something milder, that would be fantastic," she says. "We have fought to find a treatment for this devastating condition for the past 50 years. Today, we can say with real confidence that we're going to win that battle. Parents of these boys can have real hope for the future."

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Parents of Children With ADHD Face Serious Stress, Study Shows

Lesley Kennedy — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Special Needs, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Credit: Getty Images

There's no doubt ADHD is tough on the children who suffer from the disorder, but it's really hard on parents, too.

LiveScience reports a recent study published in the Journal of Family Psychology finds parents of kids with ADHD are especially sensitive to the behavior of their children, which can take an emotional toll.

"If you think about what it's like to parent a child with ADHD, it requires a kind of constant vigilance, a high level of energy," Candice Odgers, study researcher and psychologist at the University of California, Irvine tells LiveScience. "This is important, because we know that stress and the burden of caregiving in general are associated with a whole host of problems, mental health and physical problems."

Adding to the issue are state budget cuts that prevent parents from much-needed school resources, according to the website, which adds parents of children with ADHD also face higher divorce rates and stress levels, as well as less confidence in their own competence.

Odgers tells LiveScience the study's results point to a need for the entire family to be considered when a child with ADHD is treated.

"There are these really important links between children's behavior and Mom's mood and levels of stress," she tells the website. "We know from a lot of other research that mom's mental health is a very, very strong predictor of her parenting style."

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Kids Safer With Grandparents Behind Wheel, Study Finds

Tom Henderson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Babies, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Grandpa, will you drive me to school? Credit: Getty Images

Quit grousing about senior drivers. Sure, they drive 45 mph on the freeway. Yes, you could grow old yourself waiting for them to realize the light turned green.

And you wish there was some way to tell them their left turn signal has been blinking since Albuquerque.

But consider this: Researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found children are safer riding with Grandma or Grandpa behind the wheel than their own parents. Mom and Dad have the reflexes, but Grandma and Grandpa have the experience -- with just a dash of paranoid caution.

The Globe and Mail in Canada reports this is a stunning discovery, especially when you consider the older generation has a more lackadaisical attitude toward car seats and safety belts.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, assessed crash data on 11,859 children in 15 states and the District of Columbia from 2003 to 2007.

While grandparents made up 9.5 percent of the drivers in the crashes analyzed, only 6.6 percent of the injuries occurred with them in the driver's seat.

"We were surprised to find that there is a protective effect on child-injury risk in a crash when grandparents are driving," Fred Henretig, the lead researcher, tells the Globe and Mail. "There is something about grandparents' driving style with their 'precious cargo' in tow that is protective."

Flaura Winston, the director of the National Science Foundation's Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies and co-author of the study, adds seniors "tend to drive more slowly, more cautiously and in the right lane."

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Swedish Researchers Tie Folic Acid to Good Grades

Tom Henderson — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens

Credit: Getty Images

Hey, kids, want to grow up to be super smart like some sort of Swedish researcher?

Be sure to eat lots and lots of (eeewww!) okra. OK, maybe you can stick to Beef-a-Roni. The important thing is to get enough folic acid. Both okra and pasta are loaded with folic acid and the Vitamin B some researchers say led to better grades in Sweden.

Then again, that's Sweden.

"There is very little deficiency of folic acid in North America," Deborah O'Connor, a nutrition researcher, tells Reuters. "If you're already sufficient, there is not a lot of evidence that taking more supplements will help."

The Swedish study, published in the journal Pediatrics, may involve teenagers who didn't get enough folic acid, she adds.

We're big on folic acid in this country. Lack of Vitamin B during pregnancy can cause severe birth defects, so certain foods are fortified with folic acid (also called folate) in North America. O'Connor tells Reuters most people get enough of the stuff.

During the Swedish study, Reuters reports, researchers did not fortify foods, and kids didn't use a lot of supplements.

What makes the study unique is that it is among the first to examine links between folic acid and academic achievement, Torbjorn Nilsson of Orebro University Hospital tells Reuters.

Nilsson and his team studied 386 teenagers who were finishing up ninth grade. When their grades from 10 core classes were added up, there was a clear difference between teens who got the most and the least folic acid.

Even O'Connor calls the results "pretty significant."

Still, she tells Reuters, questions linger.

"It's not a randomized controlled trial, so you always wonder, are there other things going on that you weren't able to control for?" she says. "Like most studies, it probably raises more questions than it answers."

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Stay-at-Home Dads More Likely to Get Divorced

Tom Henderson — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Credit: Getty Images

You really need to think twice before you take in an ocelot, chimpanzee, wolf or human male with the thought of domesticating it first.

No matter how well trained and behaved they appear to be, these are essentially wild animals who operate more on instinct than intellect. They can be peaceful one minute and tearing your heart out the next.

And, odds are, one day they will want to return to the wild. On the other hand, odds are just as good you would will want them to go, anyway.

This is especially true of human males. Some women think they can train these creatures to stay home and perform basic domestic tasks, even take care of the children. Let's face it. That's a lot to expect from essentially mindless brutes who have trouble mastering the mechanics of lifting a toilet seat.

Researchers say they are likely to bolt.

A study published in the American Journal of Sociology concludes stay-at-home fathers are more likely to get divorced because, try as they might, they cannot ignore the calling of their Klingon blood. They generally prefer to be out in the world, marauding and competing.

Staying at home -- especially because of unemployment -- drives them to fits of depression.

"It's still unacceptable for men to stay home and take care of the kids," Liana Sayer, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study, tells Time magazine.

Sayer says a woman who is unhappy in her marriage is more likely to consider divorce if she is working rather than unemployed. But unemployed men, she adds, face a double whammy.

They stand a greater chance of dumping their wives or being the dumpee -- even if they are fairly satisfied with their relationship.

It's what Sayer calls an "asymmetrical revolution."

"The role of women has changed a lot, but we have seen far less movement in the roles of men," Sayer tells the magazine. "That men be breadwinners still seems to be very salient for couples. If a man is not bringing in some money, it seems to be unacceptable."

Sayer and her fellow researchers collected data from more than 3,600 couples who participated in the National Survey of Families and Households funded by the National Institutes of Health.

They thought they would find unhappy-but-employed men would be more likely to leave their wives. Not really.

Men's depression -- tied to their job situation -- seemed to be the deciding factor.

"For men, not having a job increases the risk he will initiate leaving the relationship, and it also increases the risk women will leave the relationship," Sayer tells Time. "Men are still held to an older standard than women and penalized by employers and stigmatized if they are doing what's perceived as women's work."

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When Schools Report Students' Weight to Parents, Changes Seldom Happen, Study Finds

Lesley Kennedy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens

Researcher says schools should be more pro-active when it comes to notifying parents of obese children. Credit: John Moore, Getty Images

So, your kid got an B- in math, a C in science and totally flunked when it came to his weight last semester? If only that last piece of info had been included in his report card, maybe you would have him hitting the gym, as well as the books, this summer.

In California, nearly all public schools have been keeping track of students' height and weight when they are fifth, seventh and ninth graders for 10 years, but not all are passing that info on to parents, Reuters reports. And, a new study shows, even when schools do notify parents when their kids are obese or overweight, it doesn't make much of a difference.

Dr. Kristine A. Madsen of the University of California, San Francisco, tells Reuters kids didn't lose any more weight when their parents were told they had pounds to shed than students whose parents were not notified.

"Physical education is probably the most underused public health tool we have," she tells the news service. "We really would urge schools to make sure their environments are supporting physical activity to the extent possible."

Madsen tells Reuters schools also should try a little harder to reach parents -- sending a letter, the way most were notified, may not be enough, and terms such as "body mass index" were used instead of words like "obesity," which could lead to confusion.

"Even if they see the letter, we think they may not get the message," she tells the news service.

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Sibling Rivalry? How Parents Can Help

Tom Henderson — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Research Reveals: Big Kids, Expert Advice: Big Kids

Credit: Getty Images

Parents can help improve relationships between squabbling siblings -- by shipping one to Bolivia and the other to outer Mongolia.

Actually, that only seems like a good idea. A highly motivated little brother will still track his sister across the globe and break all of her crayons.

Children who bully siblings are more likely to bully peers and romantic partners, says researcher Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied family studies at the University of Illinois' Department of Human and Community Development.

In an interview in the quarterly journal Vision, Kramer says parents can teach siblings basic conflict resolution skills to enable them to solve their own problems without parents having to threaten to knock some heads.

"It's based on perspective-taking, but it grows into a problem-solving approach where you can offer a lot of different ways to solve the problem," Kramer tells Vision. "It could be sharing, turn-taking or something else."

"Every day we have countless opportunities to make decisions about the ways we parent our children, all of which may have an impact on how the children get along," she adds.

In an article accompanying Kramer's interview, Vision editors suggest parents also guard against playing favorites. They note it may be difficult for parents to recognize that some of their well-meaning actions reflect bias, but "self-honesty about this destructive influence could mean the difference between a lifetime of camaraderie between their children and a lifetime of suspicion and resentment."

Just think of the Smothers Brothers: "Mom always liked you best!"

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Autism is Caused by Environmental Factors -- Maybe

Tom Henderson — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Babies, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids

After a study of twins in the 1970s, Autism became regarded as a genetic disorder. Credit: Mario Tama, Getty Images

Your child wasn't born with autism; He got it from eating turkey.

Food allergies, once discredited as a cause of autism, are making a comeback. So is exposure to chemicals, bacterial infections and other environmental factors.

"Genetics don't explain it," researcher Neil Risch, a genetic epidemiologist at UC San Francisco, tells the Los Angeles Times. "They're part of the story, but only part of the story."

Other research has largely ruled out environmental factors, but Risch and his colleagues still think they may be responsible for autism.

"I think they're really on shaky ground to say that," Paul Law, the director of the Interactive Autism Network at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, tells the Los Angeles Times.

"It's a massive claim," echoes Angelica Ronald, a behavior geneticist at Birkbeck University of London. "It flies in the face of the previous data," she tells the Times. "I don't see why the results have come out the way they have."

Risch and his team resurrected environmental causes after studying 192 pairs of identical and fraternal twins with at least one of the twins having autism. The researchers admit their calculations provide a wide margin for error. Still, they insist environmental factors deserve a fresh look.

So what really causes autism? Pick a card, any card.

The Times reports the condition used to be blamed on detached, unemotional "refrigerator mothers." After a study of twins in the 1970s, it became regarded as a genetic disorder. When the number of autism diagnoses began exploding in the '90s, it was blamed on everything from childhood vaccines to over-reactive doctors and parents.

Scientists have all but given up on finding a smoking gun that can explain large numbers of autism cases, the Times reports. Instead, they are looking for multiple risk factors that each have small effects. But the smaller the risk, the paper reports, the more difficult it is to find.

Autism researcher Lisa Croen, an epidemiologist who heads Kaiser's Autism Research Program in Oakland, tells the Times one thing is certain: "We can't determine causation from one study."

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Teaching Kids How to Read: 'Sound it Out' May Not Be the Best Method

Tom Henderson — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Education: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Researchers finds focus on phonics may not be the best way to teach children to read. Credit: Getty Images

Hooked on phonics?

You might want to consider rehab. Researchers say phonics may not be helpful to you . That stuff can really mess with your mind.

Researchers at Victoria and Otago Universities in New Zealand found that phonics -- the business of "sounding out" words -- doesn't help kids develop reading skill after the first few weeks of school.

The New Zealand website Stuff.Co.NZ reports sounding words works well until you run across a letter behaving unpredictably. Consider all the letters that fall silent in certain words.

Associate Professor Claire Fletcher-Flinn of Otago University's College of Education tells the website that phonics threaten to leave a "cognitive footprint" on kids' brains to where they can't learn new words that follow unusual rules.

"We have research evidence to show that explicit phonics -- the sounding out of each letter -- is not useful past the very early period of learning," she says. "Explicit phonics may be useful because children need to learn ... that letters in words have connections to sounds in words, but beyond that, they don't even have to learn all the letter sounds."

Researchers compared children of similar ages in New Zealand and Scotland. Children in Scotland tend to learn to read through phonics. Researchers found that New Zealand children, who learn to read more from books than phonics, learned to read faster and learned more words than their Scottish counterparts.

So is one approach really better than another?

Teacher Susie Sumner tells the New Zealand website that teaching reading is more an art than a science -- and one size does not fit all.

"Kids come in to this class at different times of the year and at different levels," she says. "It would be impossible to use a blanket approach and teach them all the same thing at the same time."

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Soldiers' Children Often Face Long Term Psychological Issues, Study Shows

Tom Henderson — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Research Reveals: Teens

Ongoing wars taken a psychological toll on children. Credit: Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

They used to call it "battle fatigue" -- the psychological toll taken on soldiers in war.

However, soldiers are not the only casualties. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, Reuters news service reports on the grim psychological price paid by the soldiers' children.

Researchers analyzed medical records of 307,520 children of soldiers on active duty and found 17 percent of them had mental health problems. The study is published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"Children of parents who spent more time deployed between 2003 and 2006 fared worse than children whose parents were deployed for a shorter duration," researchers wrote.

Lead researcher Alyssa Mansfield, who was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when the study was conducted, tells Reuters children with parents deployed at least once, for an average of 11 months, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan are especially vulnerable.

They are likely to suffer from adjustment, behavioral, depressive or stress disorders. Mansfield adds boys are more likely to have mental health problems than girls.

"We used to think about deployment as a single experience: I go, I'm away, it's difficult and then I come back. Well, it's a way of life in the military that deployments continue to occur and families have to manage the consequences," Stephen Cozza, a psychiatry professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, tells Reuters.

"These are consequences that aren't necessarily short-term," he adds.

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Parents Quit Smoking (For Awhile) When Kids Have Surgery

Tom Henderson — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Research Reveals: Teens

Kicking the habit is hard, even when you're doing it for kids. Credit:Noel Celis, Getty Images

Parents who smoke are more likely to quit if their child goes through surgery, a study shows. They worry about the effect secondhand smoke will have on the child as he or she recovers.

Then they start smoking again.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found a child's surgery may inspire parents to quit smoking, but they have no better chance than anyone else of kicking the habit permanently.

According to US News & World Report, researchers studied 1,112 children who lived with at least one person who smoked. When a child or parent had surgery, the magazine reporters, the smoker was likely to quit. But the attempt was more likely to succeed only if it was the parent having surgery.

About one in seven U.S. children who undergo surgery are chronically exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes, the magazine reports.

Secondhand smoke can increase the risk of respiratory complications associated with anesthesia. In adults, smoking after surgery has been shown to increase the risks of lung and cardiac complications and infections to the wound.

"Our current findings suggest that having a child undergo surgery can serve as a teachable moment for quit attempts," lead researcher David Warner tells the magazine.

"The scheduling of children for surgery may present us with an opportunity to provide tobacco interventions to parents, who are apparently more motivated to at least try to quit -- but who need assistance to succeed."

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Candy May Not Make You All That Fat, Study Says

Tom Henderson — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens

Credit: Getty Images

Candy makes kids fat, right?

Ha! Wrong, Captain Tofu!

Revenge could be sweet for the candy crowd. The Vancouver Sun reports a new study finds kids who eat candy weigh less and are less likely be overweight than their counterparts munching on carrots.

This revolutionary study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a big chunk of the funding came from the National Confectioners Association. You know, the people who make candy.

Great, so this may be a little like the International Brotherhood of Heroin Pushers Local 839 funding a study that concludes heavy narcotics are essential for building strong bones and teeth.

Still, data is data.

Researchers at Louisiana State University (hardly puppets of Big Chocolate) found kids who ate candy were 22 percent less likely to be overweight and 28 percent less likely to be obese.

So stick that in your bean curd, and do whatever is you do with bean curd. (What? You eat it? Gross!)

Carol O'Neil, a registered dietitian and professor at Louisiana State University's Agricultural Center, led researchers in tracking the eating habits of kids ages 2 to 17 between 1999 and 2004.

While chocolate is indisputably the food of the gods, O'Neil tells the Vancouver Sun she is not suggesting parents fill the family swimming pool with M&Ms in lieu of dinner. In fact, even though young candy eaters aren't getting fat, she still called their their diets "abysmal."

"Children need to eat better than they are eating now," O'Neil tells the Sun. "Candy can certainly be used as some sort of celebratory treat or an occasional treat."

Her study, she adds, is not "a hall pass to eat what you want."

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Study Attempts Accurate Portrait of Spanking

Tom Henderson — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: Research Reveals: Big Kids

70 percent of college-educated women spank their kids while 90 percent of all parents believe in the practice. Credit: Getty Images

Sometimes you have to smack a kid.

Sure, some liberal hippie parents pitch a fit whenever a kid is spanked, but on the front lines of parenthood, you can't afford to go soft.

Do you want your kid to grow up to some kind of ... of ... page toucher?

You know the type. They go around touching the pages of books you are trying to read to them. Better a slap on the tuckus now than to let them grow up some kind of social miscreant.

At least one mother -- involved in a research project at Southern Methodist University in Dallas -- understands that. Some 40 parents were asked to make audio recordings of their daily interactions with their children.

Researchers didn't exactly come right out and say this (because they wanted parents to act naturally), but they really wanted to find out how parents spank their children and raise their voices.

The tale of the tape says a lot. Take the Curious Case of the Terrible Toucher.

At 2:03:31 minutes on the tape: "No, Justin." Then 2:03:34 minutes, el smacko! "If you want me to read, quit messing with the pages," the mother snaps angrily. " 'Cause you're moving it while I'm reading."

Another mother in the study snaps and smacks for an entirely different reason: Her toddler hit her, so she hit him. "This is to help you remember not to hit your mother," she tells him on the tape.

"The irony is just amazing," researcher George Holden tells Time magazine.

Holden, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist who has published five books on parenting and child development, recruited parents for his study at day care centers in Dallas, saying only that he wanted to record ordinary day-to-day interactions between parents and children.

He tells Time he wanted to make sure parents didn't alter their behavior to sound good on tape. He also weeded out parents who said they never raise their voices at home.

"There weren't many," he tells the magazine.

Among the other reasons kids got spanked were fights with siblings, refusing to clean rooms and refusal to obey bedtime rules.

Why would parents feel comfortable spanking their kids when the incident is being caught on tape?

Holden tells Time they probably didn't think it was a big deal. He did a study in the '90s that showed 70 percent of college-educated women spank their kids while 90 percent of all parents believe in the practice.

And practice makes imperfect.

Holden tells the magazine kids who are regularly spanked grow up at greater risk of behavior problems. They also are more likely to be abusive to their spouses and children, he says.

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Typing is Fine, but Handwriting Makes its Mark When it Comes to Learning

Lesley Kennedy — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:30:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids

Research shows that handwriting increases brain activity. Credit: Getty Images

Sure, typing is a skill kids need to learn earlier and earlier -- what with all the laptops, cell phones and games that require it these days.

But it doesn't make you smarter like handwriting can.

New research shows writing things out by hand not only increases brain activity, but also helps develop fine motor skills and can even predict how well a student will do in school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

"For children, handwriting is extremely important. Not how well they do it, but that they do it and practice it," Karin Harman James, lead researcher and an assistant psychological and brain sciences professor at Indiana University, tells the newspaper. "Typing does not do the same thing."

Researchers at IU studied brain scans of two groups preschoolers -- one practiced printing letters and one practiced saying and recognizing letters, according to the Tribune. After four weeks, those who put pen to paper showed brain activation akin to a grown-up, James tells the Tribune.

It's just the latest study to show the benefits of handwriting. According to the newspaper, other studies that have found the same paper is graded worse if the handwriting is messy, and a University of Washington study found grade schoolers could write essays faster than they could type, and also wrote in more complete sentences when they were using a pen, the newspaper adds.

Seems to us the handwriting is on the wall. Now, where did we put that pen?

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Medicaid Kids are Denied Medical Care, Study Shows

Associated Press — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens

Credit: Getty Images

CHICAGO (AP) - Children on public insurance are being denied treatment by doctors at much higher rates than those with private coverage, according to an undercover study that had researchers pose as parents of sick kids seeking an appointment with a specialist.

Snubbed even by specialists whose offices supposedly accept public insurance patients, these kids also had to wait much longer to see a doctor. Low Medicaid reimbursements are the likely reason, the study authors said.

The study was done in Cook County, Ill., the nation's second-most populous county which includes Chicago, but the researchers and others say the results likely reflect practices around the country.

"People should be very concerned," said Dr. Karin Rhodes, the lead author and an emergency medicine specialist at the University of Pennsylvania.

The study results suggest many of the 40 million publicly insured U.S. children are not getting recommended timely treatment for dangerous conditions including asthma, diabetes and depression, she said.

"I work in an emergency room ... where you see the long-term consequences of people who did not get the care they needed," Rhodes said.

The study appears in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The study is "simple and elegant" and bolsters previous research while presenting a more accurate real-world picture of disparities facing public aid patients, said Dr. Steve Wegner, former head of the American Academy of Pediatrics' child health financing committee.

To test whether type of insurance influences doctors' willingness to schedule appointments, the researchers posed as parents of fictitious sick children referred to specialists by primary-care doctors or emergency room physicians. Seven scenarios were created, including a 9-month-old with a severe skin rash, a 7-year-old with diabetes, a 12-year-old with a suspected broken arm and a 13-year-old with symptoms of severe depression.

The researchers phoned 273 specialty clinics twice, a month apart, seeking an appointment with doctors including dermatologists, allergists, psychiatrists and bone specialists. In one call, the children were said to have private insurance; in the other, they were insured through Illinois' Medicaid program.

Overall, specialists refused to grant appointments for 66 percent of the Medicaid children, versus only 11 percent of privately insured youngsters.

Among 89 clinics that accepted both insurance types, Medicaid children had to wait an average of 42 days for an appointment, versus 20 days for private coverage.

In about half the calls, clinics asked about insurance before telling callers whether an appointment was available. In other cases, callers volunteered their insurance information - and were often told that Medicaid was the reason the appointment request was denied, the researchers said.

Orthopedic (bone) doctors were among specialists most likely to deny appointments for public kids; psychiatrists were among the least likely. Rhodes said an analysis of the reasons offices gave has not been completed.

In about 20 percent of the denials, callers were told they could seek treatment at the county public hospital or at an emergency room.

Rhodes said information is not available on how many of the doctors involved accept Medicaid patients, but that most specialists are affiliated with hospitals, which generally require them to enroll in Medicaid.

All appointments made were canceled at the end of the call. Many specialists told about the study afterward said they wanted to see any kids "who need to see me" but that they worked within health systems or hospitals that for financial reasons discouraged them from treating too many patients on public aid, Rhodes said.

In Illinois, Medicaid pays doctors about $100 for office visits like those sought in the study, versus an average of $160 from private insurers, the researchers said.

Other factors against Medicaid patients include "delays in payment and hassles of payment procedures," the researchers said.

Wegner, a Medicaid consultant and chairman of Community Care of North Carolina, a managed care group that includes most primary care doctors in his state, said accountable care organizations to be set up starting next year would help address the disparities. The groups were part of President Barack Obama's health care law.

These networks of hospitals, doctors and other health care providers would include organizations focused on the pediatric Medicaid population, he said. The idea is for providers to work together to streamline care, prevent medical errors, and focus on keeping patients healthier and out of the emergency room.

In a study published last month in Pediatrics, the same researchers used similar undercover methods to examine access to emergency dental care for children on Medicaid in Cook County - and found similar disparities.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services paid for both studies as part of a 2005 consent decree stemming from a class-action lawsuit alleging Medicaid children in Cook County weren't getting equal access to primary care.

Department spokesman Mike Claffey said both studies "provide data that highlights an issue that has been and continues to be an area of focus" for his agency and Medicaid programs in all states.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. This article was written by Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

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