News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Contrary to popular belief, having children lowers your blood pressure, according to a new study
published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

• Researchers from the University of Utah monitored the blood pressure levels of 198 adults ages 20 to 68 years old three times an hour over a 24-hour period.
  
• The ones who had children had lower readings, regardless of the ages of their offspring.

“The fact that there was no difference between parents of young children and adult children suggests that blood pressure readings reflect something about the people who choose to be parents, rather than the day to day experience of being a parent,” said Thomas Kamarck, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Labels: health, parents

A report in the British Medical Journal suggests that rickets is becoming more common among children in the United Kingdom.

• Rickets is caused by a lack of vitamin D, found in sunlight.
  
• In the 1800s, many children working in factories or mines developed rickets because they did not get enough sunlight.
  
• Rickets causes bone deformities.

"Children tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air. This means that vitamin D levels are worse than in previous years," said Prof. Simon Pearce, one of the authors of the report.

Labels: computers, health, rickets, vitamin deficiency

Brothers and sisters help children acquire social skills, according to new research published in the journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

Parents teach children how to behave in public and with adults, but siblings influence "informal" behaviors such as how to act at school and on the street, and how to attract friends by being "cool," wrote Dr. Laurie Kramer, author of the report and a professor of applied family studies at the University of Illinois.

"Siblings are closer to the social environment that children find themselves in during the majority of their day, which is why it is important not to overlook the contributions that they (siblings) make on who we end up being," she said.

Dr. Kramer said that some authors have undermined the importance of siblings by emphasizing their negative influences, such as being role models for smoking, teen pregnancy, and other behaviors.

She said that her study found that it was unimportant how far apart siblings were spaced from each other in terms of years -- just having a sibling influenced informal social behaviors.

Labels: siblings, social-skills

If your father is a teenager, you have double the chances of becoming a teenage dad yourself, according to a new study from Yale School of Public Health.

• Heather Sipsma and her colleagues studied 1500 males under the age of 18 years old and found that having a teenage father increased their chances of young fatherhood by 1.8 times, even after they factored out other explanations.
• Previous studies have found an association between being a teenaged mother and having daughters that became mothers as teens, but this was the first to study young men.
  

"We often neglect the importance of men in reproductive and maternal-child health," said Dr. Trace Kershaw, a Yale professor in the division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. "We need to recognize that men play an important role in the health and well-being of families and children."

Labels: teen parents, teen_sex

In a Jan. 14 commentary on the website of the Tulsa World, Robert J. Hudson, MD, advised parents to make a New Year's resolution to adopt a “give less, expect more” attitude toward their children in 2010:

Our children are the most overindulged in the world. We as a society expect far too little from children and give far too much. All the stuff and freedom they receive are without requiring a balance of responsibilities….

The long-term consequence to overindulged children is a feeling of entitlement. Some parents may be saying, "What is bad about feeling entitled?" As children reach the teen years and their unrealistic expectations are unfulfilled, anger, anxiety, and depression often result.

Adolescents are becoming angrier, more intolerant and more demanding to get what they want, now. This parenting style — giving too much — has created fun-seeking teens who are unprepared for the world, demanding, dependent on attention and resentful of their parents for failing to keep them happy. …

When you expect more and give less you are balancing your children's lives to meet the demands of the world. They will be truly happier, more confident and ready for the challenges and demands they will face.

Hudson is a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University Of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine.

Labels: expectations, parenting tips

Tess Chapin is a 15-year-old girl from Queens, New York, who was grounded for five weeks because she missed her curfew by an hour and was drinking at a party. Feeling unfairly punished, Tess has started a Facebook campaign aimed at convincing her parents to end her punishment.

A Jan. 15 article by Susan Dominus of the New York Times featured Chapin’s story:

A few days after founding the Facebook group — “1000 to get tess ungrounded” — Tess had nearly reached her stated goal, with 806 members by Friday morning; after this column about her quest was posted on nytimes.com, she surpassed it. …

“Her dad wanted to give her three months,” said her mother, Jennifer Iselin Chapin, a fund-raiser for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “I wanted a month. This was a compromise.”

For the duration, there will be no parties for Tess, no sleepovers, no Sweet 16s, no hanging out at a friend’s, and certainly no hanging out at a party where there is no parent present and possibly alcohol served, like the one that landed her in this situation in the first place.

“Tess, so far, seems to have accepted her fate, albeit with grumbling and the same charming sass that she displays on Facebook,” Dominus reported. “She does not have any plans, it seems, to skirt the punishment, at least none evident from her Facebook group’s page.”

Labels: internet, punishment

Divorce is hard on both parents and kids. All parties struggle with unmet expectations, feelings of disappointment or abandonment, anger, and mistrust. Some of those feelings can be magnified in kids when divorced parents start dating.

Writer Amy Wang addressed this issue in a Jan. 20 article on the website of The Oregonian:

What’s the best way for a recently divorced or separated parent to juggle kids and a new relationship? We asked Angie Blackwell, a certified Stepfamily Foundation coach in McMinnville, for her advice.

While you should be open and honest with your kids about your dating, it’s not necessary to involve the children in your dating life, Blackwell said. For instance, kids shouldn’t even meet first or second dates.

“You don’t really want the kids bonding with someone new unless you know that person’s going to be around for a while,” Blackwell said. It’s fine to talk about people you’ve met, but she advises against bringing them home right away.

Once a relationship does take off, Blackwell advises that parents continue to keep partner and kids separate for a while. “It’s a matter of slowly adding together your new interest and your children,” she said.

Labels: dating, divorce, parenting tips

Gesturing may facilitate a person's ability to reason, according to new research printed in the journal Intelligence. In fact, teaching children to use certain gestures when they learn a new procedure may help them better remember it.

• Researchers from Berlin's Humboldt University, had 28 teenagers from similar backgrounds solve complex geometric problems.
  
• The kind of intelligence associated with doing such work is called "fluid intelligence."
  
• The boys who were best at complex problem solving or fluid intelligence used hand gestures four times as often as the boys who were average.

Research from the University of Chicago found that children taught to gesture when they were learning to solve math problems are much more likely to remember how to do the problems a month later.

Ninety percent of those children taught a phrase to help them remember forgot the procedure after a month, but 90 percent who used gestures remembered. Researchers found that it didn't matter which gesture the children were taught.

Labels: academics, math, school

A study of 2,600 teenagers called Portraits of American Life found that spanking younger children may have some positive effects -- but spanking teenagers can cause bad outcomes such as antisocial behavior, early sexual activity, physical violence, and depression.

• Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe and her colleagues are interviewing more than 2,000 parents and children every three years for the next 20 years.
  
• She said that so far they did not find any indication that children who have never been spanked are any better off.
  
• Children who had been spanked when they were very young at ages 2 to 6 years old were actually doing better as teenagers in terms of "good outcomes" such as successful academic work, volunteering, aspirations for college, hope for the future, and confidence in their ability to earn a living.
  
• The teenagers who had their last spankings by age 11 were slightly worse in terms of negative outcomes, but a little better off on the good outcomes scale.

Although there have been many studies about the negative effects of spanking, this is the first to look at positive effects.

Labels: corporal punishment, research, spanking

Childhood depression may be on the increase because adults misinterpret what makes children happy, according to Dr. Lan Nguyen Chaplain, a professor at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Chaplain, who has spent years studying children's happiness, says that while the issue is complex, her research indicates that relationships can be more important than material things when it comes to a child's happiness.

"We tend to assume that children and adolescents are only interested in expensive material things. But what really makes them happy is spending time with family and friends," Dr. Chaplain wrote. "They resort to finding happiness in material goods when their interpersonal support systems fail."

• Dr. Chaplain interviewed 150 people ages 8 to 18 years old, who told her that people, pets, achievement, material toys, hobbies, and sports are the factors that contribute to their happiness.
  
• Younger children tend to rank family, friends, coaches, and teachers as most important.
  
• Older children kept people and pets in the top positions, but having material toys were more important to them than they were to younger children.
  
• In late adolescence, achievement becomes important to happiness.

"With children being constantly bombarded with images suggesting that slim figures, trendy fashions, expensive toys, or other material goods are solutions to find happiness, it is exceedingly difficult to determine what truly makes children happy", Dr. Chaplain said.

This report appears in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Labels: depression, happiness

Certain common risk factors in children that show up during routine doctor's office visits can predict diabetes in adulthood, according to a new study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The factors include overweight, parental history of diabetes, and high blood pressure, among other things.

Dr. Charles Glueck and his colleagues at the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati found that children in the 75th percentile for BMI and blood pressure had only a 2 percent chance of developing type II diabetes as adults.

On the other hand, children with risk factors "could be targeted for primary prevention of type II diabetes through diet , exercise and possibly insulin sensitizing drug intervention, with special focus on overweight children with a positive family history of diabetes mellitus," Dr. Glueck wrote in his report.

Labels: diabetes, health, pediatrics

One in every 110 eight-year-old children has autism, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control in conjunction with the University of Alabama. This new rate reflects a 57 percent increase since 2005.

"This is a dramatic increase in the number of kids classified as autistic or documented on the spectrum of similar disorders ," Dr. Beverly Mulvihill, co-author of the study, said. "It is not entirely clear what is causing the rise."

The study confirms previous research that indicates boys are 4.5 times more likely to have autism than girls are.

However, there was some promising news about autism published in the journal Pediatrics. A study from the University of Washington found that after two years of intense intervention, very young children with autism increased their IQs by 17.6 points.

• Researchers enrolled 48 children ages 18 to 30 months old either into a group that got intense therapy called the Early Start Denver Model or into a group with a less intense program.
  
• The Early Start Denver Model requires children to spend 20 hours a week with therapists in their own homes, for parents to undergo training for five or more hours a week, and other services.
  
• After two years, the children in the Denver Model had improved diagnosis, less disruptive behaviors, and higher IQs.

Labels: autism

A recent study has found that several factors, when added together, create a powerful predictor of which teens will and won’t be sexually active.

Dr. Janet Hyde and her team studied 273 teens ages 13 to 15, Reuters reported:

• About 15 percent of the surveyed teens reported having engaged in early sex
• Few of the surveyed teens said they used any kind of protection.

"Too much television, low self-esteem, low grades and poor family relationships can add up to early teenage sex,," Reuters reported. One of the strongest predictors of early sex is TV viewing, experts believe, because while TV portrays high levels of sexual activity among teenagers, it rarely shows the negative consequences.

"One thing probably by itself is not going to do it, but by the time you get two or three risk factors, things start to go downhill," Dr. Hyde said in the Reuters article.

Labels: behavior, influences, teen_sex

Teenage boys are increasingly using spa services and tanning salons, and opting for tattoos, hair dyes, and body piercing, according to a new study from Baylor University.

• Dr. John Yoo surveyed 150 boys, average age 14.3 years old, and found that they are under pressure from peers to improve their appearances through such procedures.
  
• Although a majority understand that dyeing hair or using diet pills, tanning booths, and other treatments were not necessarily safe for your health, more boys are deciding to go ahead and use them.
  
• For example, although almost 75 percent of the boys in the survey believe tanning booths are unsafe, nevertheless, 9.4 percent use them.
  
• The number of teenage boys receiving spa treatments such as hair removal has doubled since the early 1990s, Dr. Yoo said.

"I studied what kids are teased about," Dr. Yoo said. "If anyone looks different, people tease you. Probably boys who have acne would become really self-conscious. There are cultural differences, but smooth skin is highly desired, and that may translate into other parts of the body."

This research appeared in the journal Adolescence.

Labels: appearance, boys, teenagers