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The Trouble With Boys: What Parents Can Do
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2008 Comment (20)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?
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Falling Drug Use: Keep Your Teen Clean
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2008 Comment (4)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.
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4 Ways to Avoid MRSA Infections in Kids
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2008 Comment (2)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.
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7 Ways to Learn More Without More Study
Tweet Share on Facebook September 2, 2008 Comment (19)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:
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Note to Teens: Do Hard Things
Tweet Share on Facebook August 25, 2008 Comment (15)When I'm not writing about children and families, I'm covering brain science. Mix those two together and you can see why I'm fascinated with the question of whether teenagers' brains, which are still under construction, make them immature and unreliable, fit only to download Jonas Brothers MP3s. That seems to be the message we get from popular culture and from the legal system.
The new research on how the brain develops has led me to start looking for competent teenagers—not kids who get perfect SATs, but ones who are working on learning the skills they'll need to be responsible, compassionate adults. In that search, I just came across Alex and Brett Harris, 19-year-old twins from Gresham, Ore., whose new book, Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, challenges teenagers to push beyond their comfort zone. The Harrises also hosted "Do Hard Things" conferences for teenagers in seven cities last spring and summer. I caught up with Alex and Brett as they were packing to head out for freshman year at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. Here's an edited version of our conversation:
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Safer Toys Will Come, but Parents Can Act Now
Tweet Share on Facebook August 18, 2008 Comment (2)Good news for parents—last Thursday President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the biggest effort in the past 30 years to protect children from dangerous toys and products.
This comes after a horrendous 2007, when millions of children's toys were recalled for containing toxic amounts of lead, potentially lethal magnets, and other hazards.
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Too Sexy, Too Soon: Combating the Sexualization of Childhood
Tweet Share on Facebook August 11, 2008 Comment (20)A 6-year-old asks at dinner, "What's a blow job?" Four-year-old girls mimic Britney Spears's pelvis-grinding gyrations. Eight-year-old girls plot how to manipulate their parents to buy them "sexy" midriff-baring tops. And fifth-grade boys tell their teacher they know you don't have to like a person to have sex with them because they've seen pornography on the Internet.
After I read these real-life examples of the sexualization of childhood in So Sexy So Soon, the new book by Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, I felt nauseated. I have a rising kindergartner whose idea of being a big girl means going without sippy cups, and I'm nowhere near prepared for dealing with the blow job question at the dinner table. So I called up Levin, a professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, to find out what on Earth is going on. Here are excerpts of our conversation:
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Why Parenting Still Matters When Kids Reach Middle School
Tweet Share on Facebook August 4, 2008 Comment (3)Middle school is a minefield for many children, a volatile mix of sexuality and social cliques that can be overwhelming for kids who sailed serenely through grade school. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of girls who go through puberty early and are at greater risk for problems like delinquency, eating disorders, and depression. While these girls may look grown up, the bottom line is, they still need involved parents.
"There is a lot of pressure on this age group from media and peers to look older, act older, dress older," says Sylvie Mrug, a psychologist at the University of AlabamaBirmingham who has studied 10-to-12-year-olds around the country. "But mentally and psychologically, they are still immature compared to a 15-year-old."
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ADHD and Heart Screening, Chapter 2
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2008 Comment (6)When the American Heart Association recommended in April that all 2.5 million children taking stimulant drugs for ADHD should have an electrocardiogram to screen for hidden heart problems (because a small number of these children die from abnormal heart rhythms), it came as an unpleasant surprise for parents. Turns out it was an unpleasant surprise for the American Academy of Pediatrics, too, which got the news just a few hours before the recommendation went public. So, a few weeks later, the pediatricians released their own recommendation: No ECGs.
What should parents make of this expert smackdown? "The evidence is clearly not there to support the notion of routine ECGs for children being put on ADHD medications," insists James Perrin, chief of general pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of the new AAP report to be published in the August Pediatrics. "We are very clear in saying, 'No, we do not believe your child should have an ECG.' " The pediatricians posted their no-ECGs manifesto on their website on May 28, but word is only now filtering out.
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Giving Kids a Hand When Disaster Strikes
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2008 CommentHurricane Dolly was no Katrina, but that doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic for children—even if they live 1,000 miles away from South Texas. CNN endlessly flashed photos of Dolly's sinister spiral, along with repeated shots of flooded houses and cars. I found the nonstop coverage disturbing—and I'm old enough not to be afraid of thunder.
So it was my good luck that Mark Kennedy Shriver, vice president of Save the Children, stopped by U.S. News yesterday. This nonprofit works to help the 2.5 million poor children in rural areas, and aided in the recovery effort after Katrina. When workers discovered that many shelters had no place for children to play, and that parents struggled to keep kids safe and entertained at the same time they were trying to figure out the future, the group started deploying staff to help families cope and now provides Red Cross shelters with toy-filled "Safe Space" kits. Shriver, speaking as a parent of three young kids, says: "If you're in a rec center with three kids and there's nothing for those kids to do, your head's going to explode. Those are emotional scars that are going to last for years."
