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6 Ways for Teenagers to Take Control of Their Health
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2010 Comment (3)Teenagers need to learn how to navigate the healthcare system, just as they need to learn how to drive a car and balance a checkbook. That's the message from Trisha Torrey, author of the new book, You Bet Your Life: The 10 Mistakes Every Patient Makes (Langdon Street Press, $16.95)."It used to be we really didn't have to have these healthcare conversations," says Torrey, whose two daughters are in their 20s. "But now we're being asked to give our teenagers vaccinations for HPV, whooping cough, and meningitis. These things didn't exist when my girls were in high school."
I realized that many teenagers and parents could use help making the most of doctor visits when I wrote earlier this month about five ways parents can prevent teenage drinking. "Tenacious parents who won't leave the examination room" was listed by the researchers as a major barrier to teens having an honest conversation with their doctor about drinking and other health issues. That made me wonder how families could handle doctor visits better. I asked Torrey because she became an expert on navigating the healthcare system after she was misdiagnosed with a terminal form of lymphoma in 2004. It turned out she didn't have cancer at all, but wouldn't have known that had she not Googled her diagnosis and tracked down missing lab reports.
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Pediatricians Renew Push for Childhood Vaccines
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2010 Comment (8)Polio attacked Len Estin when he was 13 years old, at summer camp in the Poconos. The teenager had thought his sudden fever and muscle cramps were no big deal, and was terrified to find himself locked in a glass isolation cell in a New York City hospital, with his parents peering at him from the outside. There was no polio vaccine back then.
Estin's daughter, Alanna Levine, is now the mother of a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old, and she wants to make sure that their generation doesn't suffer from a resurgence of polio and other infectious diseases. Levine, a pediatrician who practices in Tappan, N.Y., is leading a new effort from the American Academy of Pediatrics to persuade parents that childhood vaccines are both safe and essential in protecting children from harm. She enlisted her dad to explain the realities of infectious disease to parents who have never seen a case of polio, measles, or mumps. "Our vaccination efforts have been so successful, these parents don't know what it looks like to have their children have these diseases," Levine says. "If we stop vaccinating, these diseases will return."
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Candy-Like Tobacco Products: Poisoning Is Not the Only Risk
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2010 Comment (8)Tobacco products that look and taste like candy, and have poisoned thousands of children who mistake them for sweet treats, are just the latest in a long line of tobacco goods that appeal to kids. The threat they pose to children is not just poisoning, but an increased risk of addiction.
[Read How to Keep Kids From Smoking]
Smokeless tobacco products poisoned 1,768 children under age 6 between 2006 and 2008, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported this week in Pediatrics. These tobacco products look like mints or candy strips, but deliver jolts of nicotine. "We're concerned that a number of flavored smokeless tobacco products are aimed at children," says Danny McGoldrick, vice president of research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "They look like candy, they're flavored like candy, and they're easy to conceal."
Indeed, Camel Orbs, one of the new tobacco products, look almost exactly like Tic Tac mints. It's easy to see how a 4- year-old could mistake them for candy.
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Your 'Sick' Kid May Be Well Enough for Day Care
Tweet Share on Facebook April 19, 2010 Comment (24)When a child has a runny nose but is nonetheless perky, most parents would ship him off to school or day care. But day care directors would send that kid home about 60 percent of the time, despite the fact that guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics say otherwise.
The day care exclusion guidelines make clear that in most cases, there's no point in keeping kids home once they're symptomatic: Children generally spread germs for a few days before signs of colds or other bugs appear. That's something directors of child care centers are supposed to be up to speed on. Apparently many are not. The new survey, published online in Pediatrics, found that 57 percent of the 307 day care center directors who responded would exclude children from day care with symptoms allowed under the medical guidelines. For instance:
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5 Ways Parents Can Prevent Teenage Drinking
Tweet Share on Facebook April 15, 2010 Comment (19)Teenage drinking is such a health risk that pediatricians are now being told to screen all teenagers—and even sixth graders—for alcohol use. That new policy from the American Academy of Pediatrics can be a powerful tool for parents to help their children avoid trouble with alcohol. But first, parents need to learn to give teenagers some privacy in the doctor's office.
"Tenacious parents who will not leave the examination room" are cited as a major barrier to routine screening for alcohol and drug use by pediatricians in the new teen alcohol screening policy. And what 13-year-old would want to tell Mom she pounded five Vodka Cruisers at a party? "We want to keep families involved," Patricia Kokotailo, director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health told me, "but some things are very difficult for teenagers to express if it's not confidential." She is also lead author of the new guidelines. When Kokotailo sees teenagers in the office, she usually talks with them privately before speaking to the family as a whole, but doesn't reveal anything that children want kept private.
Mounting research showing that the teenage brain is in the midst an amazing developmental phase was a chief driver behind the call for universal screening for alcohol use. That brain growth spurt gives teens remarkable cognitive powers, but also leaves their brains more vulnerable to the damaging effects of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Recent research has also shown that the earlier teenagers start drinking, the more likely they are to have problems as adults with school, jobs, and relationships.
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Spanking and Kids' Aggression: 3 Alternatives to Spanking That Work for Parents and Kids
Tweet Share on Facebook April 13, 2010 Comment (37)Does spanking your child make him behave better, or set the stage for bigger trouble? A new study says that spanking children at age 3 makes them more likely to become bullies by age 5. But the news has sparked ire from parents who say they were spanked as children, but have turned out just fine, thank you.
The study, by Catherine Taylor, an assistant professor of community health sciences at Tulane University in New Orleans, analyzed survey data in which about 2,500 mothers reported how often they had spanked their 3-year-old in the past month. Almost half of the mothers (45.6 percent) hadn't spanked at all, while 27.9 percent had spanked their child once or twice. One quarter of the mothers said they spanked the child frequently. The mothers who spanked were more likely to report aggressive behavior when the child was 5, including:
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Grandparents Can Help Recognize Autism in Children
Tweet Share on Facebook April 9, 2010 Comment (3)Grandparents are often the first to realize that a young grandchild has autism, but they often hesitate to say something to the child's parents, which can delay the best available treatment for autism: early intervention. That's the news from a first-ever survey of grandparents of children with autism, conducted by the Interactive Autism Project (IAN), the largest online autism research registry in the world. More than 2,600 grandparents responded to the online survey, which was sponsored by the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and the advocacy group Autism Speaks.
"I was the first to put a name to his condition," one grandmother reported. "I knew earlier, but [it is] extremely difficult to tell your child that you believe her child has autism." Another grandmother said she noticed signs of autism in her grandson at age 2, but didn't know how to voice her concerns without hurting the boy's parents. "What is wrong with him?" was a third grandmother's initial response to meeting her three and a half month old grandson. "My daughter said nothing was wrong; we were scaring him," she recalled. But her grandson wouldn't tolerate anyone touching him, he screamed constantly, and he wasn't eating well, she said, behavior she didn't feel was typical for a child his age. "Three-month-old babies love all the attention and love they receive," she said.
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Teenage Turmoil? Not So Much, Says Author of 'Teen 2.0'
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2010 Comment (9)Are teenagers obsolete? That's the provocative question raised by Robert Epstein, a psychologist in San Diego whose new book, Teen 2.0 (Linden Publishing), challenges the presumption that teenagers are immature and irresponsible. I asked Epstein, a father of six and former editor of Psychology Today, how his research changed how he raises his own children:
How did you come to change your mind about the capabilities of teenagers?
I just got curious about it because my second son was very mature. I recognized when he was 14 or 15 years old that in some ways he was more mature not just than his older brother, but he was more mature than I was. That made me curious. I began to wonder why my son was getting in trouble for stealing my truck, when in fact he could obviously drive. Why couldn't he just drive? Why was he stuck in high school where he was doing well when it was obviously a waste of his time? Why couldn't he start a business at 14 or 15, which he was obviously ready to do? He was trading baseball cards at a pretty high level.
On Parenting
Parenting may be an art, but there's a lot of science behind raising healthy, thriving children. Contributing Editor Nancy Shute explores the latest discoveries and developments affecting children's health and parenting. Send her your comments and questions at onparenting@usnews.com.
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