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Having Children Adds Stress to Marriage
Tweet Share on Facebook April 13, 2009 Comment (17)Having a baby is not the ticket to marital bliss. Indeed, 90 percent of couples say the quality of their relationship declined after their first child was born. That should come as no surprise to all of us who have been through the first-baby blues, what with sleep deprivation, the anxiety of getting the parent thing right, and being home alone all day with someone whose favorite activity is chewing on Pat the Bunny.
"One of the things that is important to realize is that couples who have children are not worse off than couples who don't," says Galena Rhoades, a psychologist and senior researcher at the University of Denver who is a coauthor, along with Brian Doss of Texas A&M University, of a report in the current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that details just how great a toll children take on marriage. She and her colleagues followed 218 couples over eight years and found that the vast majority were less happy with their marriage after becoming parents. About 15 percent of fathers and 7 percent of mothers ended up more satisfied with their marriage after the birth of a child. "Marital satisfaction decreases over time. It just decreases faster around the time a baby is born." OK, so it's not all Junior's fault. But clearly, many of us—make that most of us—struggle with the demands of parenthood. And marriage suffers as a result. Here are 3 ways to avoid the new-baby blues:
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Teaching Teenagers With Autism How to Make Friends
Tweet Share on Facebook April 13, 2009 Comment (10)Teenage social life can be frustrating in the best of circumstances, and it's even harder for teenagers with autism, who report feeling lonelier and having poorer-quality friendships than their typically developing classmates. But social skills can be learned, according to researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles. They have created a new class that lets autistic teenagers practice key social skills, from asking someone to get together to brushing off teasing with a "That's so lame."
Social skills classes are common for young children with autism, because problems with social interactions and communications are a hallmark of the disorder. However, there is little help for teenagers and young adults, despite the fact that teenage life is all about communicating with peers. "Because autism research is in its infancy, we're just starting to set these things up," says Elizabeth Laugeson, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at UCLA who also is associate director of the UCLA Parenting and Children's Friendship Program. She and her colleagues created a series of twelve 90-minute classes, taught weekly, in which high-functioning teenagers with autism spectrum disorders work on practical social skills. They include how to pick the peer group that's right for them (jocks, nerds, gamers); how to join and leave a conversation; how to host a get-together; how to handle bullying and teasing; and how to change a bad reputation.
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Kindergarten Tests and the Importance of Play
Tweet Share on Facebook April 7, 2009 Comment (11)Standardized testing has hit kindergarten big-time, as principals and superintendents push reading and math curricula into earlier grades to improve the odds that students will later pass standardized tests that gauge school performance. But kindergarten tests are almost certainly counterproductive, according to a new report from the Alliance for Childhood, an advocacy group in College Park, Md., called "Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School." Pushing children to perform at a level they aren't old enough to handle increases behavior problems and failure rates and takes away from a focus on the importance of play, which is what 5-year-olds really should be doing. Playing is the best way to learn social skills and self-control—which just might result in kids deciding that they really like going to school. Plus academic testing of children under age 8 is not a reliable indicator of future achievement in school, according to the nine new studies in the Alliance report.
[Find out how outdoor play can head off "nature deficit disorder" in kids.]
