Two afternoons a week, Mikala Tardy walks six blocks from Eastern High School to Payne Elementary School, not far from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. She signs in at the front desk just after 3:30 p.m. and makes her way to a classroom, where she’ll be tutoring second- and third-graders who are full of energy after the school day. Today, …

College-educated women in particular underestimate the demands of parenthood and the difficulties of combining working and parenting, new research shows. An economic mystery of the last few decades has been why more women aren’t working. A new paper offers one answer: Most plan to, but are increasingly caught off guard by the time and effort it takes to raise children. …

A study published Thursday in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology finds the percentage of U.S. teens and young adults reporting mental distress, depression and suicidal thoughts and actions has risen significantly over the past decade. While these problems also increased among adults 26 and older, the increase was not nearly as large as among younger people. Depression Treatment Raleigh Do …

There’s a before, and there’s an after. In the before, it was a relatively normal night. The kind of night any 14-year-old girl might have. Devyn ate dinner, watched TV and had small, unremarkable interactions with her family. Then, around 10 o’clock, she decided to turn in. “I went to bed as I normally would, and then all of a …

The first time Jessica Calise can remember her 9-year-old son Joseph’s anxiety spiking was about a year ago, when he had to perform at a school concert. He said his stomach hurt and he might throw up. “We spent the whole performance in the bathroom,” she recalls. After that, Joseph struggled whenever he had to do something alone, like showering …

Any kid with a cellphone or social media account is likely to be following one or more of thousands of social media influencers who regularly post about what they do, what they like and what they eat. Generally, these are people in their 20s who are successful, outgoing, positive, energetic and “highly appealing” to the younger crowd, according to Anna …

Death first visited me on a Thursday. I had a brown ‘n’ serve roll in my hand and a Vesuvius of buttered mashed potatoes on my plate. It was Thanksgiving and my 7th birthday, 1983. My grandmother sat across from me, my brother beside, my parents at the ends, but conspicuously absent under the table was our dog, Mingo, a …

I know she died, but when is Grandma coming back? Why is your skin darker than Mommy’s? Why do we live here but Daddy doesn’t? Are you the tooth fairy? Anyone with kids in their life knows what it’s like to be surprised by a tough question. It can come at any time, often when you least expect it: at …

Scouring ingredient lists. Carrying an EpiPen. Sitting at the special lunch table at school. These anxiety-ridden measures have become routine for families with severe food allergies, who know it takes only one wrong bite to end up in the emergency room. Nearly 6 million U.S. children and teens — about 8 percent, or two per classroom — have food allergies. …

Evidence is sorely lacking for the value of any over-the-counter remedy to treat most coughs. Americans spend almost $8 billion per year on over-the-counter cough and cold medicines, but despite their popularity, there is little-to-no evidence that these products can cure or shorten the duration of a cough. A lack of evidence in favor of cold medicine About 30 million …

Sometimes a psychiatric crisis can be triggered by something small. For Alexia Phillips, 21, it was a heated argument with a close family member in February 2017. She remembers the fight blew up before she left the house to go to classes at Queens College in Flushing, New York. By midday, Phillips, then a sophomore, says she began to cry …

Distrust of vaccines may be almost as contagious as measles, according to medical anthropologist Elisa Sobo. More than 100 people have been infected with measles this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over 50 of those cases have occurred in southwest Washington state and northwest Oregon in an outbreak that led Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a …

It’s the middle of the night and you wake up to the disturbing sound of your little one crying and sniffling with a cold, sore throat or fever. And, if you’re like many parents, you reach into the medicine cabinet, seeking some relief. But giving medication — and getting the dose right — can be more challenging than you might …

Killer whales, Japanese aphids and Homo sapiens — they’re among the few organisms whose females live on long past the age of reproduction. Since the name of the evolutionary game is survival and reproduction, the phenomenon begs explanation — why live longer than you can reproduce? In the 1960s, researchers came up with the “grandmother hypothesis” to explain the human …

Hollywood’s version of science often asks us to believe that dinosaurs can be cloned from ancient DNA (they can’t), or that the next ice age could develop in just a few days (it couldn’t). But Pixar’s film Inside Out is an animated fantasy that remains remarkably true to what scientists have learned about the mind, emotion and memory. The film …

Chronic pain is just one health concern women can struggle with after giving birth. Some who have complicated pregnancies or deliveries can experience long-lasting effects to their physical and mental health, researchers find. Melody Lynch-Kimery had a fairly routine pregnancy. But when she got to the hospital for delivery, she says, things quickly turned frightening. After an emergency cesarean section, …

Lisa Abramson says that even after all she has been through — the helicopters circling her house, the snipers on the roof, and the car ride to jail — she still wants to have a second child. That’s because right after her daughter was born in 2014 — before all that trouble began — everything felt amazing. Lisa was smitten, …

Rest assured, you can learn not to lose it during your child’s tantrums (and to prevent meltdowns in the future). If you are the parent to a toddler or preschooler, then you know: Tantrums happen. Sometimes, try as you might, there is simply no avoiding an epic meltdown, whether it’s at mealtime (no, just because you add milk to a …

Almost 10 years ago, journalist Hillary Frank was pregnant and planning to give birth without medication or surgery — but things didn’t go according to her plan. Instead, Frank experienced a prolonged and difficult labor that left her with a traumatic injury — chronic pain from an episiotomy that didn’t heal as expected, and had to be redone. For months …

Like many kids, Lisa Sparrell’s daughter never liked getting shots at the doctor’s office. “At first she’d cry some, but was quickly placated with rewards like a lollipop or a sticker,” says Sparrell, who lives in Honolulu. But last year, Sparrell’s 10-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a heart defect. In preparation for surgery, the little girl’s trips to the doctor …

Raising happy, self-confident kids involves helping them cope with disappointment. When parents hold their newborn infants, they naturally want what’s best for them. They want to protect them, nurture them, and give them all the opportunities to have a happy life. At the same time, however, children must learn to cope with frustrations and disappointments. Luckily, there are frustrations from …

Flu symptoms can be more severe when you’re pregnant, landing women in the hospital, threatening their lives and even leading to preterm birth or miscarriage. The virus is a risk to the woman and the baby. So, it’s particularly important that people who are pregnant get the flu vaccine. And it’s also important that the effects of those vaccines be …

Researchers have traced a connection between some infections and mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder. New research from Denmark bolsters that connection. The study, published Thursday in JAMA Psychiatry, shows that a wide variety of infections, even common ones like bronchitis, are linked to a higher risk of many mental illnesses in children and adolescents. The findings support …

Every time Bill Zima, superintendent of schools in Hallowell, Maine, sends an email, it has this sentence under his signature: “Cultivating Hope In All Learners.” This is his school district’s philosophy. It means something very specific. Zima got it from a YouTube video. “A colleague sent it to me. It was a guy in a three-piece suit standing in front …

The couch is dark brown corduroy with lumpy cushions. There are a few telltale smears of food, maybe yogurt or a banana, and some crumbs here and there. It’s a well-loved piece of furniture. Margaret Siebers plops herself down in the center and reaches out to baby daughter Frances, who climbs onto her mother’s lap to breastfeed. “This is where …

If you do a Google image search for “classroom,” you’ll mostly see one familiar scene: rows or groups of desks, with a spot at the front of the room for the teacher. One teacher, many students: It’s basically the definition of school as we know it, going back to the earliest days of the Republic. “We couldn’t afford to have …

We can inspire our kids to be kinder by talking about and practicing kindness ourselves. Today, World Kindness Day, is an opportunity for people across the world to focus on good deeds in their communities, reminding us that kindness is a positive force that connects us all. But how can we make sure that our kids get that message, too? …

Many older first-time moms face a dilemma when it comes to baby No. 2. The clock is ticking louder than ever. But doctors advise waiting at least a year and a half after giving birth before conceiving again. This is the standard advice, based on multiple studies and public health guidelines. But deciding when to try again can be a …

A recent study suggests that boys who spend more time with friends grow into healthier adults. For my three-year-old son, his playmates are an endless source of entertainment: They meet up at the park to go down the slide, ride tricycles, and conspire in plenty of shenanigans. As he gets older, I hope he will also experience the unparalleled gift …

It’s not just baby talk. Any kind of talk with young children — especially if they’re too young to talk back — will do. Because talk is vital to a child’s brain development, says Dana Suskind, who found her passion for literacy in an unlikely place: the operating room. As a surgeon, Suskind performed cochlear implants at the University of …