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
Sex offenders aren’t the only danger that computers present to kids. Children are tripping over cables, being zonked on the head by falling monitors or getting tangled up in all the electronics.
That’s according to researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Injuries caused by computers that required hospital emergency room attention jumped 732 percent from 1994 to 2006. Children under five are the most vulnerable.
The computer danger is similar to the one posed by TVs, which have caused severe head injuries and even death when young kids knock them over.
Experts recommend these tips to make computers and other home electronics safer:
– Push the computer against the wall and keep away from walkways.
– Anchor cables and cords. Install safety covers on unused electrical outlets.
– Push the computer away from the edge of the desk so it won’t topple over easily.
– Allow kids to use the computer only with adult supervision. Don’t put the computer in a play area.
Photo by Karin Dalziel
Turn on the TV, plop little kiddie in front of it and you get peace and quiet. And that’s the problem. When the boob tube is blasting, babies and their parents or caregivers don’t engage in conversation or much interaction at all. As a result, the kids are slower to develop their language skills, according to a new study.
Researchers found that each hour of TV was associated with a decrease of 770 words the child heard from an adult, Science Daily reported. The kids in the study wore small digital recorders on radom days for up to two years, which allowed the researchers to track the sounds they were exposed to and made. A total of 329 kids ranging from two months to four years old participated.
“Adults typically utter approximately 941 words per hour. Our study found that adult words are almost completely eliminated when television is audible to the child,” said lead researcher Dimitri A. Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington medical school. The research was published in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long recommended that parents refrain from turning on the TV for kids under the age of two. (This means those Baby Einstein videos, too!) Instead, parents should play, read, sing and listen to music with their child.
For older kids, these tips are encouraged:
– Keep TV off during mealtime.
– Limit TV to two hours or less per day.
– Avoid using TV as a reward.
– Keep TV out of bedrooms.
Back away from that ice cream carton. Sure, pregnant women are eating for two, but that’s no excuse to binge.
The government has issued new guidelines for pregnancy weight gain. Obese women should gain only between 11 and 20 pounds. Previously, the Institute of Medicine had no category guidelines for obsese women.
About half of all women of child-bearing age are overweight, according to the insitute. Being overweight or obese during pregnancy can cause problems for mother and baby. Risks include gestational diabetes, labor and delivery complications and premature birth. Babies who are born overweight are also at higher risk for being overweight kids. Doctors recommend that women start a pregnancy at a healthy weight.
Guidelines for other women haven’t changed. The institute recommends that underweight women gain 28 to 40 pounds during pregnancy; women of normal weight should put on 25 to 35 pounds. Check out the report here.
Give baby back her binky.
For years, many doctors have told moms that giving a baby a pacifier could discourage breastfeeding. But the idea of “nipple confusion” seems to be a myth, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
Researchers reviewed 29 studies from 12 countries that looked at the connection between pacifiers and breastfeeding. Although some women whose babies used pacifiers did stop breastfeeding earlier, researchers said that binkies shouldn’t be blamed. Those women may have had difficulties breastfeeding or just wanted to wean their kids sooner.
The researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine recommended that pacifiers be introduced when the baby is three to four weeks old, after breastfeeding is well established. Pacifier-use also is encouraged because studies have shown that babies who use them when they sleep may be less susceptible to sudden infant death syndrome.
Don’t supersize that bottle.
If your baby gains a lot of weight during the first six months of her life, she could be obese by the time she’s in preschool, according to a study in the medical journal Pediatrics.
How much weight a kid gains and how suddenly that happens is a bigger factor in determining childhood obesity than how much the baby weighed at birth, the mom’s weight during pregnancy or the weight of the kid’s parents, according to the researchers. The Harvard Medical School study followed 559 mother-child pairs in the Boston area. Researchers found that a baby weighing 18.4 pounds after six months had a 40 percent greater risk of obesity by age 3 than a kid who weighed 16.9 pounds.
Pediatricians interviewed by the Chicago Tribune weren’t so sure that parents should put their fat babies on a diet, though. Dr. Mary Hall said that some kids stabilize in weight between the sixth and ninth months. Still, she said that it’s best that parents not always respond to their babies by offering food. “They may need to hold the baby, change the baby’s diaper, or the baby may be tired,” she said.
Breathe! Push! And have some yogurt, will ya?
Doctors have long told women not to eat while in labor, but a new study now says that some light snacking doesn’t harm mom or baby. Previouly there was fear eating could lead to breathing food in the lungs in case of an emergency C-section.
Researchers compared two groups of moms — one was only allowed to drink water and the other could have bread, fruits, yogurt and fruit juice during delivery, AFP News reported. The study of 2,426 moms found that there was no difference between the two groups in terms of duration of labor, percentage of C-sections or even rate of vomiting. The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggested that fasting while in labor could even be more harmful since who wants to work on an empty stomach?
Two new studies suggest that such a treatment could help children increase their tolerance for nuts.
Researchers gave allergic kids doses that began as small as one-thousandth of a peanut and gradually upped their intake to about 15 peanuts a day. Many of the kids in the studies were able to tolerate the treatment, but four kids dropped out because they had allergic reactions. The research at Duke University and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock involved a small sampling, just 33 kids in one study and 18 in another.
Researchers, who presented the results at a conference on Sunday, said the the results were promising and could eventually lead to some sort of treatment for peanut allergies, the New York Times reported. For now, parents are advised not to try such treatments as home. About 2.2 million American children suffer from food allergies, and exposure can lead to severe reactions and even death.
McDonald’s is loving it. One quarter of an average child’s vegetable intake consists of French fries, according to a new study.
As for fruit, kids are getting 40 percent of their intake through juices, which often contain high amounts of sugar. The study, conducted by Ohio State researchers, examined government data on 6,500 kids ages two through 18.
Barbara Lorson, an Ohio State dietitian, told USA Today of one suggestion for parents: offer your child fresh produce when he’s especially hungry.
Another new study offers a less cruel way to entice kids — rename the vegetables. Four-year-olds ate twice as many carrots when they were told that the veggie were “X-ray vision carrots.” Other ”cool” food names suggested by Cornell University researchers: power peas and dinosaur broccoli trees.
Photo by Scott Abelman
No, TV won’t harm your baby. But it won’t turn her into a genius either, despite what those Baby Einstein video marketers say.
A new study says that preschoolers who may have watched more television as babies scored about as well on verbal and motor skills tests as those who spent less time in front of the boob tube. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, tested 872 children when they were six months old and then when they were age 3.
The average kid spends about an hour a day in front of the TV at age six months and 1.4 hours a day by age 2, according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Kids in lower-income families or whose mother had less education are more likely to watch more TV.
The results of the study isn’t a rationale to let TV continue to babysit the kids, though. Researchers caution that as children get older, too much TV watching produces a slew of negative effects – kids become fat, lazy, sleepless and develop attention problems.