I don't know how to move forward after the shootings of the children in Newtown.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that I have a first grader. Whenever I close my eyes, I have visions of a gunman storming into his school. My son's classroom is just off the main lobby--it would be his class a gunman would get to first. When I see the list of ...
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There was some good news recently about teens and driving: according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the number of teens who report drinking and driving has come down by half in the past decade from two in ten to one in ten.
While that really is good--great--news, it doesn't change the fact that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for US teens. In 2010, every day ...
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My two oldest children recently left for semesters abroad: Michaela went to Paris, and Zack to Beijing. I have all sorts of Mommy nervousness about this, but in my heart I know they’ll be fine. They are adults now, at 21 and 20—and not just adults, but capable, responsible, great people.
I don’t know how that happened.
I know that sounds stupid. And it’s not like I have no clue at all. ...
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I got a really unexpected honor recently: according to Sharecare, I’m the top online influencer for children’s health.
I truly didn’t see it coming. I didn’t go into the online space to be an influencer. I’ve been writing about health and parenting for more than twenty years; when publishing moved into the online space, I just moved along with it. But having been online, blogging and doing other social ...
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In early 1996, I sat down at my computer looking for help.
My third child, 2 months old, had just been diagnosed with a severe brain malformation called lissencephaly. He won’t be normal, the doctors said grimly. His life will be shorter, we were told. He will have seizures and other problems, they said, but it’s hard for us to say what or how bad those problems will be. We were ...
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If we want to fight childhood obesity, we need to get kids moving.
Sounds incredibly obvious. And that was my reaction when I first read the study just released in the journal Pediatrics—in it, the authors said that high school students were less likely to be overweight or obese if they played at least two sports during the school year, or if they walked or biked to school. Really? Next ...
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For years, I have been telling families in my practice, especially those with teens, to eat dinner together. Family dinners make a difference, I tell them. Studies show that they not only help prevent obesity, they help kids do better in school and help keep them out of trouble.
Now a study says that’s a bunch of hogwash.
Well, not exactly hogwash. The researchers from Cornell who wrote “Assessing Causality and ...
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A child with autism is more likely to do well if his mother is white and educated.
This is the message of a study just released in the journal Pediatrics, and it’s something we need to pay attention to—now.
Researchers from Columbia University wanted to find out what happens to children with autism over time. So they looked at the records of more than 6,000 children with autism who were enrolled ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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Past 6 Months
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