Entries for September 2008

England has a new plan for helping children with ADHD: Treat the parents first.

With that, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is giving a big "Whoa, Nelly!" to the recent trend toward increased use of Ritalin in the United Kingdom, saying instead that the first response should be to give parents training on how to handle kids who are inattentive, hyperactive, or impulsive.

What would ADHD treatment look like here if the United States adopted the same national standard? With as many as 10 percent of children here medicated, that's no small question.

Back-to-school time is barely over, and here comes the newest task for fall—flu shots for all.

For the first time, the federal government is recommending that all children ages 6 months to 18 years get seasonal influenza immunizations. That means an additional 30 million children should be dragged into the pediatrician's office for a shot, starting this month. Kids who have never had a flu shot before should get two shots, spaced at least a month apart.

Pediatricians are getting geared up for the onslaught; I got a letter from my pediatrician over the weekend telling me and other parents we need to schedule shots in advance and that if we don't show up, we'll have to pay a $25 penalty. I instantly felt fluish; my stomach had that "oh no, not one more thing to tack onto my already too-long to-do list" feeling. Isn't it enough to sell gift wrap for the PTA fundraiser??

Is school breaking our boys? Accumulating evidence says yes:

• Boys are kicked out of preschool at 4.5 times the rate of girls.
• Boys lag behind girls in reading and writing in elementary school, a lag that gets bigger in middle school and high school.
• Teenage boys are four times as likely to commit suicide as girls.
• Girls are doing so much better than boys at academics that by 2016 only 40 percent of college undergraduates are expected to be men.

I saw the roots of this miserable trend up close and personal last week when I visited my daughter's elementary school lunchroom. The girls sat quietly talking and eating. The boys were jumping up, poking each other, spilling juice, running around the table, smooshing their pb&js into a ball. The lunchroom ladies' response: Sit down and zip your lip. Yikes! These are 5-year-olds we're talking about here, and this was their first break after a morning of literacy and math lessons. In kindergarten. Is it any wonder boys might conclude that school is not for them?

Teenagers aren't all addled cottonheads who nod off while watching the stoner antics of Pineapple Express. In fact, increasing numbers of teenagers are choosing to steer clear of illegal drugs, with just 9.5 percent indulging in 2007, down from 11.6 percent in 2002, according to new federal stats. Score one for clearheaded decisions! (By contrast, 18-to-25-year-olds increased their abuse of OxyContin and other prescription drugs.)

But how does one become one of those clear-thinking teenagers? That, it turns out, is a tough question to answer. To try to figure it out, I recently spoke with Michael Windle, Rollins professor and chair of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory University. He's spent the past 22 years finding out what happens to teenagers who drink and use drugs later, when they grow up. Some get seriously messed up for life, while others can binge drink and wind up as model citizens at age 30. Windle and other researchers have determined that about 20 to 25 percent of teenagers are at serious risk of having drug and alcohol problems. That's due to a combination of factors, including genetic susceptibility, social influences, and psychological issues. The other 75 percent of kids are probably going to be fine.

Parents have good reason to be freaked out about MRSA, a microbe that causes nasty skin infections and is resistant to some antibiotics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ginned up new guidelines aimed at helping parents prevent MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in kids, but good luck finding the practical advice on the CDC's website. We've boiled it down to spare other parents from needless clicking.

The abundance of new research on how teenage brains work, aside from being cool for its own sake—teen brains are developing madly, pruning synapses and insulating neurons to build a lean computing machine—is fueling a new movement to help kids make the most of the brain they've got. Think of it as a user's manual for a machine that's still being wired.

One of the leaders in that movement is Wilkie "Bill" Wilson, a neuroscientist and director of DukeLEARN, a Duke University project to teach teenagers the practical applications of neuroscience. DukeLEARN's curriculum for 9th-graders won't be in the schools until 2009, but with the first homework of the fall already being stuffed into backpacks, I asked Bill for a sneak preview. He asked: "How would you like to learn more without having to study more?" Sign me up! Here's how: