More than half of all children engage in some sexual behavior before age 13, according to one study. But what’s normal exploration, and what’s a problem?
A new report by two physicians published Monday in the journal Pediatrics tries to resolve this sticky question. The conclusion: Many childhood sexual behaviors are within the realm of normal. Kids often behave sexually out of curiosity or as a way of testing interpersonal boundaries.
However, any behavior that is “persistently intrusive, coercive … or abusive” is a red flag that something may be wrong, according to Dr. Nancy Kellogg of the University of Texas Health Science Center, who is one of the co-authors of the study. Sexual abuse, domestic violence or exposure to lewd content in the media can all be linked to problematic sexual behaviors.
There are many sexual behaviors in children that many parents may not be comfortable with, which aren’t actually a sign that anything is really wrong, a Chicago Tribune story on the study pointed out. For instance, when your three-year-old son sticks his hands down his pants in the grocery store, don’t freak out. Just redirect him to a more socially acceptable activity, like begging for sugary cereal.
Sleep could save your teen’s life. A new study claims that kids who go to bed by 10 p.m. are less prone to be depressed or have suicidal thoughts.
Researchers found that teens whose parents insisted on a set bedtime were 25 percent less likely to be depressed and 20 percent less likely to have suicidal thoughts. The findings were culled from a database of 15,000 teens who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
“Teens who get less sleep may be more anxious and more likely to feel badly,” Dr. Jonathan Pletcher of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh told HealthDay News. “But, I think this study’s findings also speak to a connection between the teen and their parents and their ability to work together.
Experts says that most teens should have at least eight to nine hours of sleep a night. Not getting enough can affect a child’s focus and learning and lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. It can also affect moods and make a teenager more impulsive. All of which can lead to depression.
For tips on how to help your teen get a better night’s rest, click here.
Photo by Husin Sani
American teens sented and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day. WTF, that’s a lot of LOLing!
A story in the New York Times suggests that all that time spent tap-tapping away might not be healthy. One pediatrician quoted argues that sending hundreds of messages could be interferring with much needed sleep. Some kids who are overzealous texters see their grades drop, or even their thumbs start to hurt.
Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is the director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, has studied teens and texting for three years. She argues that texting may make it tougher for kids to separate from their parents – one of the chief jobs of adolescents – since they can text them 15 times a day, asking banal questions like, “Should I get the red or the blue shoes?”
Yet, even when a teen’s grades drop because of rampant texting, and mom and dad confiscate the phone, they may be sending mixed messages by their own addiction to the Blackberry or iPhone. “Teens feel like they’re being punished for behavior that their parents indulge in,” says Turkle.
Now, excuse me while I go text my daughter to tell her to put away the phone and spend some time outside.
Sirdeaner L. Walker says she called her son’s school repeatedly to get teachers to stop the bullies. But she says, school officials, didn’t do enough. On Monday, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with an extension cord in his home. He had been a sixth grader at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, Mass.
“I just want to help some other child. I know there are other kids being picked on,” Walker told WCVB TV News. She said that her son had had a hard time making friends since transferring to New Leadership this year. Classmates allegedly called him gay, mocked his clothes and threatened to hurt him. School officials declined comment.
About 30 percent of kids are either a bully or the victim of bullying, according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center. Unfortunately, many of the incidents only come to the attention of adults after a tragedy. Read more about teen suicides and bullying here.
If you think your teen spends too much time on Facebook, this story may give you hope.
A 16-year-old American teen helped save the life of a suicidal British teen whom she had never met when she heeded his Facebook cry for help, Cnet reported. The Maryland teen learned that one of her “friends,” a boy in Oxford, was in distress when he wrote late Wednesday night: “I’m going away to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while then everyone will find out.”
Concerned, she notified her parents, who called the British embassy, who notified Scotland Yard, who contacted local police in Oxford. With nothing but the boy’s name to go on, the police narrowed it down to eight households.
By sending bobbies to each of those addresses, the authorities found the teen in time. He’d overdosed on drugs, but was still alive. The police reached him just three hours after he’d posted his message online.
Who says Facebook friends aren’t real friends? To learn how to recognize the warning signs of teen suicide, click here.
William and Janis Mohat are accusing a Ohio high school for not doing enough to stop the constant harassment that their son endured from other students. Eric Mohat, 17, shot himself on March 27, 2007. His parents recently filed a federal lawsuit against Mentor High School, located in the Cleveland area.
Eric wrote about the torment on his MySpace page. He said that he had had been pushed and elbowed in the hallways and was constantly called names like “fag” and “queer.” The lawsuit claims that on the day that Eric killed himself, a student said in front of other kids, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself? Nobody would miss you.” At least one administrator saw Eric crying in the hallway, but made no effort to help, according to the court filing.
The school system declined comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement that it “takes all claims of bullying and harassment seriously and continues to train staff and students using a robust anti-bullying program.”
A lawyer for the Mohat family told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that bullying was a factor in the suicides of two other teens at Eric’s school. William Mohat said that the family would drop the lawsuit if the school system required reports of bullying to be written up and parents quickly notified in writing and tougher punishment for bullies. Read about other teen suicides caused by bullying here.
Jessie Logan ended the relationship with her boyfriend, but the X-rated photo that she sent him in happier times couldn’t be stopped. After their break-up, the naughty picture of the Cincinnati teen went viral, passed to hundreds of other students. Harassment soon followed.
“They’d call her slut, whore, a skank,” said Lauren Taylor, one of Jessie’s friends, in an interview with WLWT TV News. “They’d say that she was just trying to be a porn star.”
In July, Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom. Her mother is now going public with Jessie’s suicide in an attempt to warn other teens about the dangers of sexting – and bullying. “She was being attacked and tortured,” Cynthia Logan said on NBC’s Today Show.
Jessie’s mom and friends say that she changed from a vivacious, fun teenager into a depressed introvert who skipped school. No matter what she did, it seemed as if technology would not let her escape embarassment. “When she would leave school, she would get on her MySpace or her Facebook, and then kids would be messaging her on that or texting her phone, people she didn’t even know,” Lauren said. Jessie’s cell phone was found not too far from her body, on the bedroom floor.
Photo from NBC Today Show Web site
Here’s some free entrepreneurial advice: If you want to run a successful day care center, don’t pull down the kids’ pants and comment on their genitalia.
A California Department of Social Services report says Suzanna Best did just that at Best Family Child Care Home in Apple Valley, near the Mojave Desert. The report says Best pulled down children’s pants in front of adults and made inappropriate comments about the size and shape of their sexual organs. Knowing the way children take such comments to heart, this might have prompted suicidal despair.
Among other findings, the Associated Press said, the report says a developmentally disabled child was taken to the backyard and hosed off
with a garden hose after defecating in her clothing. The daycare center telephone has been disconnected.
Keeping them away from shoot-em up games violates their precious constitutional rights. That’s the reasoning behind a California court’s strike-down of a four-year-old law designed to shield minors from violent video games. The law, which never took effect, would have banned the rental or sale of violent games to those under 18, and required strict labeling by the manufacturers.
“None of the research establishes or suggests a causal link between minors playing violent video games and actual psychological or neurological harm, and inferences to that effect would not be reasonable,” Judge Consuelo Callahan said in her ruling for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The law’s author, state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, is asking Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yee, a child psychologist, said “we need to help empower parents with the ultimate decision over whether or not their children play in a world of violence and murder.”
Photo by Mileena
Years ago, your parents told you it was a bad thing to watch too much TV. It still is. A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry indicates that greater exposure to TV by adolescents leads to increased risk of depression, particularly for males.
The study, led by Dr. Brian A. Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, first surveyed the amount of time 4,100 healthy non-depressed adolescents spent watching TV or videos, listening to the radio or playing computer games. Seven years later, when the participants were in their early twenties, they were examined again.
The more TV they had watched, they more likely they were to be depressed.
“We did not find a consistent relationship between development of depressive symptoms and exposure to videocassettes, computer games, or radio,” the researchers reported.
Among the possible reasons for the TV/depression link: the fact that TV sucks up time that could be used for socializing and playing sports. Then there’s TV’s well-known ability to promote feelings of inadequacy among viewers, or even take the place of all-important sleep.