Children’s Health

Spanking linked to behaviour problems in kids

Decades of research studies have found that spanking can negatively affect kids, researchers said.

Child psychologist George Holden and three colleagues at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, wanted to see if parents’ positive views toward spanking could be reversed if they were made aware of the research.

Researchers used a simple, fast, inexpensive method to briefly expose subjects to short research summaries that detailed spanking’s negative impact.

Carrying out two studies, one with non-parents and one with parents, Holden and his co-authors on the research found that attitudes were significantly altered.

“Parents spank with good intentions – they believe it will promote good behaviour, and they don’t intend to harm the child. But research increasingly indicates that spanking is actually a harmful practice,” said Holden, lead author on the study.

“These studies demonstrate that a brief exposure to research findings can reduce positive corporal punishment attitudes in parents and non-parents,” Holden said.

The researchers believe the study is the first of its kind to find that brief exposure to spanking research can alter people’s views toward spanking.

“If we can educate people about this issue of corporal punishment, these studies show that we can in a very quick way begin changing attitudes,” said Holden.

In the first study, the subjects were 118 non-parent college students divided into two groups: one that actively processed web-based information about spanking research; and one that passively read web summaries.

The summary consisted of several sentences describing the link between spanking and short- and long-term child behaviour problems, including aggressive and delinquent acts, poor quality of parent-child relationships and an increased risk of child physical abuse.

The majority of the participants in the study, 74.6 per cent, thought less favourably of spanking after reading the summary. Unexpectedly, the researchers said, attitude change was significant for both active and passive participants.

A second study replicated the first study, but with 263 parent participants, predominantly white mothers.

After reading brief research statements on the web, 46.7 per cent of the parents changed their attitudes and expressed less approval of spanking, researchers said.

The findings have been published in the international journal of Child Abuse & Neglect.

Source: Post Jargan

Premature Birth Linked to Asthma in Childhood

A new analysis of existing research suggests that premature babies face a higher risk of developing asthma and wheezing disorders when they’re older.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School, the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland examined 30 studies that included about 1.5 million children.

They found that premature children (born before 37 weeks of gestation) were 46 percent more likely to develop asthma or wheezing problems than kids who weren’t born prematurely. Full-term birth is generally considered about 40 weeks’ gestation.

Very premature children (those born before 32 weeks’ gestation) faced an even higher estimated risk — almost three times that of children born at full term, said Jasper Been, from Maastricht University, and his colleagues.

About 11 percent of children are born prematurely, the study authors said in the report, which was published in the Jan. 28 online edition of the journal PLoS Medicine and these chldren suffer a lot when they go to school. Here are the tips to manage Your Child’s Asthma at School

“The current findings do not support prior suggestions that the association between preterm birth and wheezing disorders becomes less prominent with increasing age,” the researchers wrote in the report. “Instead, the strength of the association was similar across age groups [up to 18 years],” which suggests that the effects of preterm birth on the lungs tend to have life-long consequences.

Although the study found an association between premature birth and respiratory problems such as asthma later in life, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Source: web md

Think twice before giving your child paracetamol!

A new study has found that paracetamol can interfere with the brain development of children, and can even be dangerous for unborn kids.

Researchers at Uppsala University examined paracetamol, one of the most commonly used drugs for pain and fever in children, by giving small doses of it to ten-day-old mice. They later carried out tests on the behavioral habits of the mice in adulthood.

They found that the mice could be hyperactive in adulthood, could display behavioural disturbances, and could have lower memory capability compared to the mice that weren’t given the dose, the Local reported.

Researchers said that the exposure to and presence of paracetamol during a critical period of brain development can induce long-lasting effects on cognitive function and alter the adult response to paracetamol in mice.

They added that parents should be careful in administering the drug. (Read: Why you don’t need medicine every time you have slight fever)

Researcher Henrik Viberg told the Upsala Nya Tidning newspaper that this shows that there are reasons to restrict the use of paracetamol at the end of pregnancy and to hold back from giving the medicine to infants.

The study was published in the online Toxicological Sciences journal.

So when should I take antipyretics like Paracetamol?

Fever up to 38 degree (102° F) might be considered as a safe, beneficial level that should not be interfered with antipyretics every time. Antipyretics should be used only when the temperature of the body is raised high enough to cause discomfort. In general, body temperature between 102° F and 104°F may cause uneasiness, so it’s better to bring it up to or below 102° F. Fever that rises above 104° F is definitely harmful and should be reduced with quick action. (Read: Apollo Hospitals launches fever clinic to tackle recurring, unknown fevers)

Adverse effects

The use of antipyretics to reduce fever is still controversial. Since all the available anitipyretics are pretty effective in managing fever, safety should be the main criteria while taking them. Common side-effects of frequent use of antipyretics include nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, breathing difficulties and headache. (Read: Painkillers or analgesics: Side-effects and precautions)

Most adverse effects due to antipyretics are a result of overdose (due to ignorance and negligence). Most of them have been cited in western literature and therefore may differ from Indian population. Overdose of paracetamol use has shown to cause liver toxicity and may also have an effect on circadian rhythm in healthy individuals. Ibuprofen is may lead to digestive disorders and, rarely, gastrointestinal bleeding. Kidney insufficiency and gastritis are also known adverse effects of antipyretics. (Read: Ibuprofen — why you shouldn’t pop these pills indiscriminately)

To summarize, antipyretics should not be used to bring down fever completely. The use of antipyretics should be limited just for symptomatic relief and to ensure that it is not raised to a dangerous level. Most of the times people also use antipyretics when there is minimal fever or to prevent fever from recurring. However, there is no evidence suggesting that antipyretics prevent fever from recurring. Also, half of times the dosage taken is incorrect. With this the chances of toxicity and adverse effects increase. Therefore, it is better to check the labels before taking an antipyretic drug and think about the long term complications you might have to face.

source: newsr

Kids’ Vitamins Often Exceed Recommended Doses

Young children who take vitamins may be consuming much greater levels than recommended of the nutrients, a new study suggests.

For the research, scientists reviewed the labels of nearly 200 dietary supplements marketed for children in two age groups: younger than 12 months, and 1 to 4 years old. The researchers determined the level of vitamins that children would consume if they used the product as directed. (Specifically, they looked at levels of vitamins A, C, D, E, K and B12, along with thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, biotin and choline.)

Most products contained vitamin levels much greater than those recommended for children in a single day. For example, dietary supplements for children ages 1 to 4 contained, on average, about 300 percent of the daily recommended levels of vitamin A, thiamin and riboflavin, 500 percent of the recommended level of vitamin C and more than 900 percent of the recommended level of biotin

Vitamin D was the only vitamin that was present at or below recommended levels for both age groups.

It’s too soon to know whether these findings are concerning, said study researcher Michael Madden, an assistant professor at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) School of Pharmacy. That’s because few studies have explored the effects of greater-than-recommended levels of vitamins on infants and young children. So in many cases, the maximum amount of a vitamin that’s safe for a child to take is not known, the researchers said.

For this reason, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends that young children not consume excess levels of certain vitamins, including vitamins K and B12, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, pantothenic acid and biotin. (Infants should not consume excess levels of most vitamins.) The IOM, part of the U.S. National Academies, is a national nonprofit that advised the nation on health.

There is also a concern that children’s bodies may lack the ability to handle excess amounts of certain vitamins, the IOM says.

The findings suggests that “much of the pediatric vitamin supplementation is not based on IOM recommendations and therefore represents wholesale over-supplementation,” the researchers wrote in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Some studies have also shown that dietary supplements may contain levels of vitamins that are different from what’s listed on the label.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says parents should speak with their pediatricians about whether their young child may need to take supplements. Toddlers who eat a balanced diet should be getting adequate levels of most vitamins and so should not need supplements, the AAP says. And very high doses of some vitamins, such as vitamin A, may even pose risks because they can accumulate in the body, the AAP says.

But some children may need supplements if, for instance, they have selective eating habits, and therefore don’t get adequate levels of vitamins through food, the AAP says.

In addition, the AAP recommends vitamin D supplements for infants, children and adolescents so that they consume 400 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day.

Source: live science

Sibling relationships tied to children’s vocabulary skills

siblingsIn large families, young kids can’t always get a lot of individual attention from parents – but healthy interactions with an older sibling might help compensate for that, a new study suggests.

How older children interact with their siblings is tied to the younger children’s development, Canadian researchers found.

“The idea is that here is this effect of being in a large family where you don’t get that many resources, but if you get an older sibling that’s really attuned to your needs that would be a modifying effect,” Jennifer Jenkins told Reuters Health.

Jenkins is the study’s senior author and the Atkinson Chair of Early Child Development and Education at the University of Toronto.

Previous research had found that children from large families tend to score lower on vocabulary, IQ and other academic tests, compared to those from smaller families.

“That’s been pretty well examined that the larger the family, the less good the child’s skill in language and IQ,” Jenkins said. “It’s really thought of as a resource dilution.”

For example, if a couple has a second child, the attention they spent on their first child will then be split among both kids.

She cautioned that whatever effect a large family may have on a child is small, however.

To see whether an older sibling can possibly fill in for some of that diluted attention, the researchers used data from an existing trial that included families from Toronto with 385 young children who had a sibling at least four years older.

Mothers and older siblings were scored on how they interacted with the younger child.

For example, the researchers scored whether the older sibling or mother were sensitive to the younger sibling’s abilities and gave positive feedback.

The younger sibling’s vocabulary was also tested by having the child point to an object’s picture after its named was said out loud.

The researchers found that children with many siblings tended to score lower on the vocabulary test, compared to those who had smaller families.

Children from large families whose older siblings scored higher during the interaction, however, tended to score higher on the test than those whose older brother or sister scored lower during the interaction.

The association between an older sibling’s so-called cognitive sensitivity and the younger child’s score remained strong even when the researchers also accounted for traits that might have influenced the results, such as gender and age.

While the overall association may be small, Jenkins said many traits that are associated with similar cognitive delays are of a similar size.

“It’s multiple and multiple accumulating influences,” she said. “I think all of these small influences are worth paying attention to.”

Jenkins said the next step would be to develop a trial to test a program that encourages older siblings to have better interactions with their younger brothers and sisters to see if that improves the younger siblings’ cognitive abilities.

That, she said, would also help show that the older sibling’s interactions cause better outcomes in their younger brothers and sisters instead of just showing that the two are somehow linked – as this study does.

The study also has some limitations, including not knowing what kind of interactions the younger children’s other siblings have with each other.

Jenkins and her colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics on Monday that it’s also possible that the association is reversed and that the younger child’s abilities influence the type of interactions their older siblings have with them.

“Siblings really play this very strong role in how kids come out,” Jenkins said. “I’d like people to think about those sibling relationships a little bit more and then how to strengthen them.”

Source: Reuters

 

Childhood amnesia occurs at the age of seven

Psychologists have suggested that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as “childhood amnesia.”

The research involved interviewing children about past events in their lives, starting at age three. Different subsets of the group of children were then tested for recall of these events at ages five, six, seven, eight and nine.

Emory psychologist Patricia Bauer, who led the study, said that their study is the first empirical demonstration of the onset of childhood amnesia.

She said that they actually recorded the memories of children, and then they followed them into the future to track when they forgot these memories.

The experiment began by recording 83 children at the age of three, while their mothers or fathers asked them about six events that the children had experienced in recent months, such as a trip to the zoo or a birthday party.

After recording these base memories, the researchers followed up with the children years later, asking them to recall the events that they recounted at age three. The study subjects were divided into five different groups, and each group of children returned only once to participate in the experiment, from the ages of five to nine.

While the children between the ages of five and seven could recall 63 to 72 percent of the events, the children who were eight and nine years old remembered only about 35 percent of the events.

The study has been published in the journal Memory.

Source: ANI news

5 reasons why crying is actually good for your baby!

Often you don’t know why your little one is in tears and disturbed to the core. But the good thing about crying is that baby’s indication about his needs and mother’s instincts work together. ‘It’s through crying that a newborn expresses his needs while the mother responds, this also helps in the mother baby bonding,’ says Dr Geetanjali Shah, consultant pediatrician attached to Ashwini Hospital, Mumbai. A crying baby needs soothing and we all know that. But while you whack your brains how to calm your baby know that it’s a healthy sign indicating his overall well-being. Wondering how?

Importance of first cry: This is the sound you had been waiting to hear all the while. It not only marks your baby’s arrival but blows trumpets for you as you enter a new phase of life. ‘This helps the baby to breathe in and the lungs to open up to take in air. Though many parents believe that crying would every time help the lungs to grow stronger but it’s only the first cry that does the trick. Other times look for signs that are distressing the baby,’ says Dr Shah. When your baby breaks into his first cry you know that all is well within and you can sigh in relief.

Helps in communicating: In the absence of crying, you would never be able to know what your baby needs. ‘Crying can be because of various reasons and in varied pitches. Each pitch indicates the level of discomfort or attention needed. Over the period of time each mother learns to read between the cries,’ says Dr Shah. So when your baby cries look for the obvious, is he hungry, needs a diaper change, feeling hot or cold, needs comforting or is crying for attention. ‘Only his cries will tell you that you need to check on his well-being as it serves to be a medium of communication, a kind of language for the baby,’ explains Dr Shah.

Helps in psychological well-being: When you are taking care of or soothing your baby it gives out a message to him that he is not alone. ‘Many adults would advice to ignore a crying baby in order to discipline them, but newborns need more attention than discipline in the initial months of life. This helps the baby to feel secure and safe; a child growing in such care and love develops into a better individual than the one who is not. A baby ignored every time would land being quiet and this would pose a challenge for the baby’s physiological well-being. In fact unusually quite babies can be psychologically disturbed within,’ cautions Dr Shah.

Helps to stretch muscle: If you take a closer look at a crying baby, you would see the many muscles, the limbs or the entire body that’s been twisted and turned while the child whines. Gosh, that’s an exercise in itself! ’But it’s not like babies do not stretch themselves often. So be sure that the cry is not due to any medical reason or colic. Do not leave a child crying for too long,’ says Dr Shah.

Helps shed excess emotional baggage: Now this isn’t surprise that tears are a way of shedding the excess emotional baggage even for babies. Know when they have tantrums and you chose to not obey your little master, the obvious thing for him to do is break into a cry. Don’t panic, this allowing of emotions to come out is also good. ‘Listen to your baby while he cries and explains his needs or desire, especially the toddlers, and then talk it out and distract them. This works to break the tantrum and balance the emotions as well,’ says Dr Shah.

Source: Health India

 

New Child Car Seats May Protect Kids In Side Collisions

The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the first time ever, has announced its proposal on upgrading children’s car seats to survive a side collision, or “T-bone” crash. Under the new rules, child car seats sold in the United States, designed for kids weighing up to 40 lbs., would have to go through a rigorous side-impact test before they are authorized for vehicle use.

“Car seats are an essential tool for keeping young children safe in vehicles and have a proven track record of saving lives,” said NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman in the press release. “Today we continue to build on our extensive child seat safety program by adding side-impact crash protection for the first time.”

An NHTSA study has shown that many child death and injuries commonly occur in side-impact crashes. Typically, in these crashes, the car carrying children is stopped at an intersection — usually at a light or stop sign — and when the car begins to go through the intersection, it is struck in the side by a vehicle traveling at a greater speed on the cross street. Unrestrained children are found to be eight times more likely to sustain incapacitating injuries than children restrained in child safety seats. However, the agency believes designing child car seats to withstand side collisions will greatly reduce the number of deaths and injuries per year.

The feds’ proposed test will aim to simulate a T-bone crash where the front of a vehicle traveling 30 mph will strike the side of a small passenger vehicle traveling at 15 mph. The NHTSA chose these speeds because they are known to cover over 90 percent of side collisions seen not only in the U.S., but around the world.

Rather than using actual vehicles, the tests will include sleds because “the aim isn’t to test the crash worthiness of specific vehicles,” NHTSA officials said. The car seat will be positioned on the sled, with another sled ramming the side of the sled with the seat. The tests will use a to-be-developed side-impact 3-year-old child dummy, along with the NHTSA-approved 12-month-old dummy to accurately reflect the age groups of child car seat users.

“As a father of two, I know the peace of mind this proposed test will give parents,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, NBC News reported. “We all want to make sure our children’s car seats are as safe as possible, and today’s proposal will give parents and car-seat makers important new data on how car seats perform in side crashes.”

Installation and proper use of safety seats are vital in protecting children in motor vehicles. The NHTSA fact sheet says they can reduce up to 71 percent of fatalities for infants and 54 percent for toddlers. Acknowledging the importance of child vehicle safety, manufacturers like the Dorel Juvenile Group — the world’s largest car-seat maker — has begun to incorporate small, already-inflated air bags.

Some manufacturers are already taking steps to improve the protection afforded by their car seats in side-impact crashes. The Dorel Juvenile Group, the world’s largest car-seat maker, has been incorporating small, already-inflated air bags into some of their models to protect children’s heads from injury in side-impact crashes since 2009, Julie Vallese, a spokeswoman for the Columbus, Ind., company told The Associated Press. “Dorel is committed to side-impact protection,” she said.

The NHTSA proposed regulations will be open for the public to comment on for 90 days after they are published this week. These regulations will not be final until the agency reviews comments and answers any important issues that may arise upon discussions. The agency acknowledges this can take months and sometimes years, but they are hopeful the process will move quickly.

Car-seat makers would be given a three-year time frame to make any design changes necessary to pass the side-crash tests and abide to regulations if and when they are passed. The new child car seats could save five lives and prevent 64 injuries each year, the NHTSA estimates.

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests infants and toddlers ride in a rear-facing car seat until age 2 and then moved to a front-facing seat with a harness until at least age 4. They will then have to be placed into a “seatbelt-positioning booster seat until they’ve reached 4 feet, 9 inches tall and are at least 8 years old.” Children who outgrow their booster seats are recommended to continue to ride the back seat until they’re at least 13 years old.

Source: Medical daily

Shopping cart danger: 66 kids hurt a day, study finds

The combination of kids and shopping carts is never easy, as any parent of a squirmy toddler knows, but a new study confirms it’s also dangerous, with an estimated 66 children a day in the U.S. hurt in falls and spills.

That’s one child injured badly enough every 22 minutes to go to the emergency room, or more than 24,000 children a year, according to research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

And the problem hasn’t gotten better since voluntary shopping cart safety standards took effect in 2004. In fact, since then, the annual number of concussions tied to shopping carts in children younger than 15 jumped nearly 90 percent, according to a new analysis of data from 1990 to 2011 by Dr. Gary Smith, director of Nationwide’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.

“This is a setup for a major injury,” Smith said. “The major group we are concerned about are children under 5.” His study is published in the January issue of the journal Clinical Pediatrics.

Kids ages newborn to 4 accounted for nearly 85 percent of the injuries. More than 70 percent of the harm was caused by falls out of shopping carts, followed by running into a cart or carts tipping over.

It only takes a moment for a parent to look away for a shopping cart accident to happen, Smith said. A wiggly baby in an infant seat or a toddler reaching for a bright box of cereal can easily cause a fall that results in serious injury. Children’s center of gravity is high, their heads are heavy and they don’t have enough arm strength to break a fall, Smith explained.

Just last week, a 19-year-old worker at an Alaska Home Depot caught a baby in mid-air after she fell out of a shopping cart. Christopher Strickland of Anchorage rescued the girl seconds before her head would have hit the concrete floor.

Part of the problem is that the U.S. lacks stability standards for shopping carts that have been adopted in other countries, Smith said.

Parents should opt for carts that seat kids low to the ground, like those with toy cars or fire engines, he said. Otherwise, they should avoid carts, if possible, or remain vigilant while their children are using them.

Source: nbc news

 

Screen Time Study Finds Education Drop-Off

With children spending more time in front of screens than ever, parents sometimes try to convince themselves that playing Angry Birds teaches physics, or that assembling outfits on a shopping app like Polyvore fires creativity.

According to a study scheduled for release on Friday, however, less than half the time that children age 2 to 10 spend watching or interacting with electronic screens is with what parents consider “educational” material. Most of that time is from watching television, with mobile devices contributing relatively little educational value.

What is more, the study, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research institute affiliated with the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of “Sesame Street,” shows that as children spend more time with screens as they get older, they spend less time doing educational activities, with 8- to 10-year-olds spending about half the time with educational content that 2- to 4-year-olds do.

Athena Devlin, a professor of women’s and American studies at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and the mother of two children, said that her son, Elias, a kindergartner, still watched quite a bit of public television, including shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Dino Dan,” and that she has been impressed by the detailed facts he learns.

But her daughter, Laura, a fourth grader, prefers shows like “Jessie” on the Disney Channel or “Total Drama Island” on the Cartoon Network, which Professor Devlin sees as the preteen equivalent of her own addiction to “Scandal.”

“I feel like with the educational content of television, the bottom drops out of it after age 5 or 6,” she said. “It’s a bummer, and I’ve looked out for it.”

She said that when playing games, her daughter liked Wizard101, while both children gravitated toward Fruit Ninja or Clumsy Ninja, whose educational value Professor Devlin does not rate highly.

“It would be nice if they could get pleasure out of something that also taught them something,” she said.

According to the survey, 2- to 4-year-olds spent a little over two hours a day on screen, with one hour and 16 minutes of educational time, while 8- to 10-year-olds spent more than two and a half hours a day on screen, but only 42 minutes was considered educational. The survey was based on interviews with 1,577 parents and conducted online from June 28 to July 24 by GfK, a research company.

The survey allowed parents to assess whether a game or program taught social and emotional skills, as well as cognitive learning related to vocabulary, math or science.

The survey said lower-income families reported that their children spent more time with educational programming on screen than middle-income and higher-income families did. Families earning less than $25,000 said 57 percent of their children’s screen time was educational, while families earning $50,000 to $99,000 said it was 38 percent.

Michael H. Levine, the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, said that particularly for the most vulnerable children who might falter in their academic careers, “we need to have a better balance in the way these media are used.”

Vicki Rideout, who wrote the report, said that with teachers seizing on digital media as a new way to ignite children’s interest at school, more needed to be done to ensure that out-of-school screen activities were not only educational but of high quality.

“It’s far too easy for the best stuff only to be available for the kids who already have many opportunities,” said Ms. Rideout, “and to flip into content that has the gloss of education on it, without the substance, for the kids who are in need.”

Michael Thornton, a second-grade teacher at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Charlottesville, Va., and the father of three children under 6, said parents were increasingly asking him for referrals to educational apps, like Geared and Glass Tower, for teaching math and spatial recognition skills, and Chicktionary, for vocabulary.

But, he acknowledged, “you have to really take your time to search through them.”