The first time I got pregnant, I was a comparatively young mother, for my demographic: I was 25, in medical school, surrounded by classmates who, for the most part, were not reproducing yet. By the third pregnancy, 11 years later, I was over 35, which classified me, in the obstetric terminology I had learned in medical school, as an “elderly …

Childhood Exposure To Lead Can Blunt IQ For Decades, Study Suggests. Exposure to lead as a child can affect an adult decades later, according to a study out Tuesday that suggests a link between early childhood lead exposure and a dip in a person’s later cognitive ability and socioeconomic status. Lead in the United States can come from lots of …

For Jernica Quiñones, the reality of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, hit close to home this year when a friend woke up on New Year’s Day and discovered the lifeless body of her baby girl. That’s why Quiñones’ 4-month-old son, Bless’n, has spent a lot of his life so far sleeping in a cardboard box. The 33-year-old mother of …

We stand in the bedroom together, side by side, clothes and toys piled up around us and empty boxes tossed into the hallway. “So, tell me,” I say. “What do you want to keep on the walls, and what should come down?” The colorful train decal on the wall of this bedroom looks babyish now compared to the basketball posters …

Parents and policy makers have become obsessed with getting young children to learn more, faster. But the picture of early learning that drives them is exactly the opposite of the one that emerges from developmental science. In the last 30 years, the United States has completed its transformation to an information economy. Knowledge is as important in the 21st century …

When a parent asks their child plenty of “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, “where?”, “why?” questions, encourages them to go into detail and includes open-ended questions, psychologists call this an elaborative style. Past research has shown that children with parents like this tend to remember more experiences from their lives (the opposite parental style is to ask fewer questions in general, and …

If you’re in need of some renewed faith in human nature, the research literature on altruism by toddlers is a great place to look. Charming studies have shown that little children will readily go out of their way to help you, such as picking up things you’ve dropped, or passing you stuff you can’t reach. They can even do “paternalistic …

It’s tough to be a teenager. Hormones kick in, peer pressures escalate and academic expectations loom large. Kids become more aware of their environment in the teen years — down the block and online. The whole mix of changes can increase stress, anxiety and the risk of depression among all teens, research has long shown. But a recent study published …

Building thankfulness and appreciation into the fabric of your family is a gift your kids can rely on when they are faced with disappointment. Painful thoughts and emotions sometimes show up when children and teens practice appreciation and children can easily misinterpret parents’ reminders to be thankful as an indication that we’re minimizing their challenges, even when that’s not the …

According to research, rather than antidepressants, there’s another option in dealing with postpartum depression: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Imagine being pregnant. Now imagine you are at one of your routine OB appointments, legs in stirrups, when the OB asks if you have any experience with mindfulness practices. She’s already told you about the importance of nutrition and exercise, rest and self-care. …

Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The documentary “Web Junkie,” to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing …

One of the most stressful questions a new parent confronts is, “Who’s going to take care of my baby when I go back to work?” Figuring out the answer to that question is often not easy. When NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed more than 1,000 parents nationwide …

If you have young kids in school, or talk with teachers of young children, you’ve likely heard the refrain — that something’s changed in the early grades. Schools seem to expect more of their youngest students academically, while giving them less time to spend in self-directed and creative play. A big new study provides the first national, empirical data to …

Erika Christakis’ new book, The Importance of Being Little, is an impassioned plea for educators and parents to put down the worksheets and flash cards, ditch the tired craft projects (yes, you, Thanksgiving Handprint Turkey) and exotic vocabulary lessons, and double-down on one, simple word: Play. That’s because, she writes, “the distinction between early education and official school seems to …

Although her oldest child, Ben, is 10 years old, Andrea Scher, 44, feels like a new mom again. Scher suffered from maternal depression after Ben was born, eventually recovering with the help of antidepressants and psychotherapy. She was understandably relieved that her depression didn’t return after the birth of her second son. But now she’s struggling again. Once more, Scher …

Pregnancy changes a woman’s brain, altering the size and structure of areas involved in perceiving the feelings and perspectives of others, according to a first-of-its-kind study published Monday. Most of these changes remained two years after giving birth, at least into the babies’ toddler years. And the more pronounced the brain changes, the higher mothers scored on a measure of …

Many parents these days seem to obsessively celebrate their children’s developments by snapping photo after photo on their cellphone cameras. Me? I record my son’s words in my notebook, on my phone, in my laptop. I want the audio record, and the written one; they capture one of the most evanescent aspects of childhood – the linguistic shooting star of …

These days, even 3-year-olds wear headphones, and as the holidays approach, retailers are well stocked with brands that claim to be “safe for young ears” or to deliver “100 percent safe listening.” The devices limit the volume at which sound can be played; parents rely on them to prevent children from blasting, say, Rihanna at hazardous levels that could lead …

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in the United States. It touches the lives of millions of people, including me and Thomas. Just like Thomas, I spent much of my childhood sitting in a little chair across from a reading tutor. Today, Thomas is working with his tutor in an office building in northwest Washington, D.C. The suite they’re …

Drug education is the only part of the middle school curriculum I remember — perhaps because it backfired so spectacularly. Before reaching today’s legal drinking age, I was shooting cocaine and heroin. I’ve since recovered from my addiction, and researchers now are trying to develop innovative prevention programs to help children at risk take a different road than I did. …

What’s Going on Inside the Teen Brain? Why we need to give teens the space and the safety to grow. Some 36 million people in the US are between 12 and 24 years of age—a vital period of development many neuroscientists call the age of the adolescent brain, or the teenage brain. We’ve recently seen a profusion of books (see …

There are rating systems for hospitals, nursing homes and doctors. So why is it so hard to compare providers of child care? Part of the reason is that there are no nationally agreed-upon standards for what determines the quality of child care. The standards that do exist are formulated in each state, and they vary widely. For example, some states …

Just about every day, genetic counselor Shawn Fayer heads to the maternity ward at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and tries to convince new parents to give him a blood sample. Fayer is offering gene sequencing for newborns. It gives parents a tantalizing look at their baby’s genetic information. New parents Lauren and Ian Patrick, from Marion, Mass., were …

Life is pretty busy for Mike Buchmann, a high school art teacher and football coach, and his wife Shannon, who works as an assistant controller at a small private college near their home in Mishawaka, Ind. Everyone is out the door by 7:45 each morning: Mike shuttles their two older kids to before-school care, while Shannon drops off their 14-month-old …

It’s a classic which-came-first question: Is the child not getting enough sleep because of problem behaviors, especially at bedtime, or is the child behaving problematically because of not getting enough sleep? The answers are most likely yes and yes, and the back-and-forth currents can drag a child down developmentally. In an editorial in JAMA Pediatrics in 2015, Michelle M. Garrison, …

Middle school is tough. Bodies change. Hormones rage. Algebra becomes a reality. But there are things schools can do to make life easier for students — like this big study we wrote about showing that K-8 schools may be better for kids than traditional middle schools. But aside from re-configuring an entire school system, are there other ways to make …

Picture this: You’re in the supermarket with your hungry preschooler in tow. As you reach into the dairy case, you spot a sign with a friendly cartoon cow. It reads: “Ask your child: Where does milk come from? What else comes from a cow?” Examples of signs used in the supermarket study to spark parent-child conversation. Temple University Department of …

Increasing numbers of children have high blood pressure, largely as a consequence of their obesity. A growing body of evidence suggests that high blood pressure may impair children’s cognitive skills, reducing their ability to remember, pay attention and organize facts. In the most comprehensive study to date, published on Thursday in The Journal of Pediatrics, 75 children ages 10 to …

Most of you reading this are (or will be) in a caregiving role (personal or professional) with a child who is struggling. When faced with a child or teen you know who suffers from an emotional or behavioral condition—or even if their situation is not “diagnosable,” yet you’re convinced they are struggling in a significant way—then it’s important to consider …

Corporal punishment, also known as “physical discipline,” has become illegal in recent decades in many countries, starting with Sweden in 1979. The United States is not one of those countries, and pediatricians regularly find ourselves talking with parents about why hitting children is a bad idea. The American Academy of Pediatrics officially recommends against physical discipline, saying that evidence shows …