Jane Brody surveys the kids’ sports landscape, and pulls a bracing quote from Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids, by Mark Hyman:
“Every year more than 3.5 million children under 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse.”
A massive anthropological study of American family life is complete. Cameras on 32 families; 1,540 hours of video.
“This is the richest, most detailed, most complete database of middle-class family living in the world…What it does is hold up a mirror to people. They laugh. They cringe. It shows us life as it is actually lived.”
Enemies can be good for a child’s growth, say researchers.
Almost everyone picks up a tormentor or two while growing up, and until lately psychological researchers have ignored such relationships — assuming them to be little more than the opposite of friendship.
Yet new research suggests that as threatening as they may feel, antagonistic relationships can often enhance social and emotional development more than they impede it.
Too much T.V. for toddlers leads to problems later, says a Canadian study. Maybe no surprise, but still…
[E]ach hour of extra TV exposure in early childhood was associated with a range of issues by the fourth grade…[T]hose with more TV exposure participated less in class and had lower math grades. They suffered about 10 percent more bullying by classmates and were less likely to be physically active on weekends.
Do we start out with a sense of right and wrong or not? A long exploration in the NYT Magazine:
[T]he current work…on baby morality, might seem like a perverse and misguided next step. Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings? From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals…
A study looks at how a depression and stress combo can trigger asthma symptoms in children.
If your child has asthma and is experiencing symptoms of depression, you may want to reconsider buying advanced tickets to the Twilight’s Eclipse. New research shows asthmatic children with depression are 50 percent more likely to have an attack when placed in stressful environments, and this includes the box-office hits, too.
Another massive mental-health related piece in the New York Times magazine–Concocting a Cure for Kids with Issues.
[Some] parents often don’t trust the mental-health professionals who usually treat children with “issues,” as we euphemistically tend to refer to problems like learning disabilities, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism or other developmental difficulties. [...] That’s why some of these parents end up seeking the services of people like Stanley A. Appelbaum. Appelbaum is a behavioral optometrist…
