My 6-year-old son is really farsighted, and I had no idea. I completely missed it.To be fair to me and my husband, the ophthalmologist (the esteemed and wonderful Dr. Hunter of Children’s Hospital Boston) said that Liam was compensating really well. And until his yearly checkup last month, he had been passing vision tests (which mostly test for nearsightedness). But in retrospect, there were signs we didn’t pay attention to. ...
Claire McCarthy, MD
The achievement culture problem in our country
My friend Nancy went for physical therapy for her back pain the other day, and was really surprised by what she saw there: the place was full of kids."Yeah, it’s like this now," said the therapist when Nancy asked about it. "It’s the sports."It’s not that kids are getting clumsier or having more accidents. The injuries that are sending kids to physical therapy are overuse injuries. Kids these days are ...
Pediatrics is full of uncertainty, not unlike the practice of parenthood
Recently I wrote a blog about how the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) thinks that otherwise healthy children with ear infections should wait a couple of days before starting antibiotics, because many will get better without them.Now there are two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine (here and here) saying that children with ear infections who are given antibiotics are more likely ...
Is the media responsible for childhood eating disorders?
I really don’t want my children to be overweight. I know this because I see the consequences every day in my practice, consequences like high blood pressure, impending diabetes, or poor self-esteem.At the same time, I really, really don’t want my children to have an eating disorder. I know this because I had one.In college, I suffered from anorexia nervosa. I’m a little more than 5 feet 9 inches tall, ...
