-
Kids Can Go to School With Head Lice, But Schools May Disagree
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2010 Comment (42)This week the nation's pediatricians let loose a bit of news that could transform the lives of parents: They said head lice are OK. Any parent who has had to deal with a school's no-nit policy has experienced firsthand the frustration of keeping a perfectly healthy child home from school because that child's shiny clean hair harbors a few nits; the child isn't learning, the parent isn't earning. But don't be surprised if your school continues to send children home for lice.
Many schools have adopted a no-nit policy as the simplest way to manage head lice outbreaks, which are commonplace, affecting 6 to 12 million children a year. But the American Academy of Pediatrics took another look at the science, and said there's no evidence that head lice pose a disease risk, or are a sign of bad hygiene. What's more, they say there's no evidence that sending a child home reduces the spread of lice, or that in-school screenings can control outbreaks. So this week the AAP revised its policy, saying schools shouldn't send home children with lice or nits (louse eggs). I called my local school district to see if they were thinking of revising their send-'em-home policy, and was told that mine was the first call they'd gotten on that question.
-
How to Help Children Cope With a Dangerous World
Tweet Share on Facebook July 19, 2010 Comment (1)We live in dangerous times, and children often see and hear more than we parents would like. Just the other morning my 7-year-old was asking me what was going on with the American soldiers and Afghan villagers in a photo on the front page of the paper. That was just hours after a 5 a.m. earthquake jolted us awake in Washington, D.C.!
Children are resilient, but experiencing traumas like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill can threaten their physical and mental health. Even watching frightening or traumatic images on TV can spark PTSD-like responses. Given that we can't always protect our children from disaster, what can parents do to minimize harm? Quite a bit, it turns out. In a new issue of Child Development, researchers who have studied children affected by disasters including the 2004 tsunami, 9/11, and Katrina found that how parents respond has a great deal to do with how well children survive adversity. Their findings include:
-
Kids' Vision Tests Don't Catch Common Eye Problems
Tweet Share on Facebook July 14, 2010 Comment (2)Eye tests commonly used in schools and pediatricians' offices don't do a good job of finding vision errors like farsightedness and astigmatism in school-aged kids, even though they're great at catching nearsightedness. That's the news from researchers in Australia, who tested 12-year-olds with the usual eye chart test, in which children read a chart with letters in ever-smaller sizes.
School troubles could be a sign of undiagnosed farsightedness because the condition can make reading difficult, according to David Hunter, ophthalmologist-in-chief at Children's Hospital Boston. I called Hunter after reading the new study, published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, because my child has passed those eye chart tests with flying colors, but I've had farsightedness and astigmatism my whole life. So I asked Hunter: How can parents tell if a child needs more than that test?
-
Does My Kid Really Need a Cholesterol Test?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 12, 2010 Comment (8)Do all children need a cholesterol test? Troubling news from West Virginia suggests so, where researchers say the current system of screening for high cholesterol misses almost 10 percent of children who are affected because it relies on a family history of heart disease to identify children at risk. About 1 in 500 children have hereditary high cholesterol, which is the most common cause of high cholesterol in children.
Pediatricians and cardiologists have been going back and forth on the question of testing kids' cholesterol for years now; the most recent recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued in 2008, calls for fasting cholesterol tests in children starting at age 2 if kids are overweight and/or have a family history of heart disease. But the West Virginians, writing in Pediatrics, think it's time to screen all kids, no matter their risk profile. Their subjects weren't all overweight either, just a group of fifth-graders screened as part of an effort to combat the very high rates of heart disease and obesity in Appalachia. So I called up William Neal, a pediatric cardiologist and professor of pediatrics at West Virginia University, who is one of the authors of the new study, to find out why the call for cholesterol tests for all.
-
iPhone App Gives Parents a Pediatrician in Their Pocket
Tweet Share on Facebook July 8, 2010 CommentParents who dread trying to call their pediatrician on nights and weekends have a new friend: the KidsDoc iPhone app.
Say your child has a stomach ache. Click on "abdominal pain" and KidsDoc asks: "Is this your child's symptom?" Drill down to "pain or discomfort located between the bottom of the rib cage and the groin crease" and you will encounter a list of symptoms based on severity. Selecting: "Not moving or too weak to stand," prompts a message to immediately call 911, whereas selecting "mild pain that comes and goes," instructs you to call your doctor within 24 hours.
-
Car Seats Aren't Safe When Used in the Home
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2010 Comment (6)Car seats keep children safe—except when those seats aren't in the car. Parents who park babies in car seats inside the home put their children at risk of falls and head injuries, according to new research from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. That's news to me; parents get lots of information on how using car seats properly protects children in motor vehicle crashes, but this is the first report I've seen on what happens when we yank the baby bucket out of the back seat and walk into the house. It's not a pretty picture.
According to the researchers, who examined injury reports to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 43,562 babies were treated in emergency departments for car seat accidents that occurred outside of motor vehicles from 2003 to 2007—which translates to about 8,700 babies a year. Most of the children were 8 months or younger, and most suffered a head or neck injury as a result of falling from the car seat. The results were published in the August issue of Pediatrics.
-
Do Video Games Cause ADHD? 3 Ways to Keep Your Kids Safe
Tweet Share on Facebook July 6, 2010 Comment (10)Grade schoolers and young adults who play lots of video games are more likely to have ADHD or other attention problems, according to new research in Pediatrics. Does that mean it's time to yank the game controller? Maybe, maybe not. Here's why.
There's plenty of data showing that TV time doesn't help young children, and may be distracting them from what they really should be doing--which is playing and interacting with people. A few studies show that preschoolers who watch lots of TV are more likely to have ADHD, but cause and effect hasn't been proven. (It could be, for example, that kids who have short attention spans are more drawn to TV than others.) Although some studies have explored the link between violent TV shows and aggressive behavior, there's been very little research on video games and ADHD, surprising because every teenage boy I know seems to be glued to games like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Halo."
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.
advertisement
Featured Video
advertisement
Subscribe
U.S. News Weekly
An insider's guide to politics and policy, available on the iPad or as a PDF download.
