News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

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

A study published in the Dec. 6 edition of Nature revealed a connection between obesity and a genetic abnormality. According to the L.A. Times, the discovery spared one British couple the anguish of losing their children.

The youngsters’ severe obesity had been seen as a possible sign of abuse or neglect, and they had been put on the list of the country's social services department.

"They were being blamed for their children’s condition, receiving frequent visits from social services, frequent reviews, knowing people could have their children taken away," [researcher Dr. Sadaf] Farooqi said.

Both the study and the British couple's situation have raised questions about just how much parents can be held responsible for their children's weight problems. In June, a South Carolina mother was sentenced to 15 years in jail on felony charges of neglect. Her 14-year-old son weighs 555 pounds.

Labels: chilhood_obesity, overweight, research

Unlike in past decades, many modern parents don't require children and teenagers do household chores -- but according to Professor Markella Rutherford of Wellesley College, that’s not a good development.

Dr. Rutherford went through over 300 parenting magazines printed between 1920 and 2006, and found a drastic shift in giving parents giving children chores to do. Previous generations thought of chores as a way to allow them to contribute to their families and communities and to teach them responsibility.

“Until very recently,” Dr. Rutherford wrote, "greater autonomy and responsibility were emphasized as antidotes to teenage listlessness and rebellion."

• Between 1920 and 1970, teenagers often cared for sick family members; planned, shopped for and cooked family meals; maintained the family car, and kept household accounts.
• However, between 1970 and 1990, parents’ attitudes changed and schoolwork became a child’s only real responsibility.

"In the past, parents did not feel the need to bribe children because they were confident chores benefited their children by making them feel both responsible and an active part of family life," Dr. Rutherford wrote in her study, Children’s Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis of Child-Rearing Advice. "Children of the past would not have expected to be bribed because their parents taught them to take pride in a job well done."

Labels: chores, parenting tips, research, responsibility

In 1989, the Girl Scouts conducted a landmark study on the overall attitudes and behaviors of young people. They conducted a follow-up study this year, and found that, in general, today's kids are headed in the right direction.

The blog Ms. Twixt provided the following details from the study, which is scheduled to be published in December:

• 62 percent of surveyed teens say they would not cheat on a test (compared to 48 percent in 1989)
• 58 percent of surveyed teens say they would refuse an alcoholic drink if offered one at a party (compared to 46 percent in 1989)
• 18 percent say smoking is okay if the person finds it enjoyable (compared to 27 percent in 1989)
• 76 percent say they will give regularly to charity (compared to 63 percent in 1989)

Labels: alcohol, morals, research, tobacco, values

Spanking children may cause them to have lower IQs, according to two new studies from the University of New Hampshire and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

• The first study found that national average IQ scores were lower in countries where parents commonly spank their children.
• The second study, which involved more than 1,500 American children, found that spanking had a negative impact on intelligence regardless of factors such as the level of parental education and income.
  
• Children ages two to four who were spanked had IQs five points lower than those the same age who were not spanked.
  
• Among the older children the difference was 2.8 points.
  

Previous studies have linked spanking to aggression, antisocial behavior, and poor mental health issues in children.

The two studies were presented at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma.

Labels: corporal punishment, discipline, research, spanking

Overweight children who wet their beds at night may have obstructive sleep apnea, according to a study from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.

Dr. Joseph Barone and his colleagues compared 149 overweight children (ages five to 15 years) to 139 normal weight children of the same age. Bedwetting and being overweight raised the risk for sleep apnea.

This study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

Labels: bedwetting, health, overweight, research, sleep_apnea

An innovative study of babies found that even small children can feel guilt and want to atone for something they did wrong. The study found that such guilt was not necessarily a bad thing, because the two-year-olds who showed the most guilt went on to have fewer behavioral problems over the next five years.

• Dr. Grazyna Kochanska and her colleagues at the University of Iowa told toddlers that they should be very careful with a certain toy.
• The toy was special and precious because it had belonged to the researcher when she was a little child.
• However, the toy was rigged to fall apart. Once that happened, the researcher would observe the child.

Some children would cover their faces with their hands, avoid eye contact with the researcher, and otherwise express guilt. The ones who expressed the most guilt were more likely to behave well over the next five years, even if they scored low on their ability to focus and control their impulses.

(By the way, the researchers did assure the children that the toy was easily fixed, showing them perfect replicas and reassuring them that it wasn't their fault and that toy was as good as new.)

Labels: babies, emotions, research

Some scientific studies support anecdotal evidence that when autistic children have a fever, they have fewer autistic behaviors. Now scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University believe that this could mean that the symptoms of autism might someday be reversible.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects one in 150 children in the United States. The characteristics of the disorder are difficulties in communication, repetitive behaviors, and impaired social interactions. Dr. Mark Mehler, author of the new study, believes that autism is caused by impaired regulation of the local coeruleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain that processes sensory signals from the body and, among other things, produces fevers.

"We are talking about a brain region that is not irrevocably altered," Dr. Mehler said. "It gives us hope that with novel therapies we will eventually be able to help people with autism."

Though hopeful about the future of autism treatments, Dr. Mehler warned parents against unrealistic optimism.

"You can't take a complex neuropsychiatric disease that has escaped our understanding for 50 years and in one fell swoop have a therapy that is going to reverse it," he said. "That's folly." Yet, he wrote, he does believe that increases in scientific understanding of autistic brains may result in drug therapies to help autistic people.

Dr. Mehler's study appeared in the journal Brain Research Reviews.

Labels: autism, research, treatment

Children of parents who have depression and/or anxiety disorders are at high risk for such problems, too. However, two new studies found that therapy could break the generational cycle.

Dr. Judy Garber of Vanderbilt University studied 316 teenagers whose parents had depression in the past or who were currently depressed.

• Half went into weekly group therapy with others their age and the other group had only usual care.
• Almost a third of the group that had usual care developed depression, while only 21 percent of the other group became depressed.
• However, the success rate of the program depended partly on whether the parents were depressed when the interventions began.
• If the parents were actively depressed, the teens were more likely to become depressed during the study period.

"Were we surprised? No. There is evidence in the literature that kids don't respond as well to treatment if the parent is depressed," said Dr. Garber, whose study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the second study, researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center studied 40 children whose parents had anxiety disorders.

• The children in the study were between the ages of seven and 12.
• These parents attended therapy to recognize when they were being overly anxious or overly protective toward their children.
• After one year, none of the children developed anxiety disorders -- but 30 percent in a control group did.

The Johns Hopkins study appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Labels: anxiety, depression, parents, research

A new British study finds that children with Asperger’s Syndrome have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps the body deal with stress by increasing blood pressure and blood sugar to adapt to changes in the environment.

People generally wake up with a double amount of cortisol to help them with the stress of a new day. However, researchers at the University of Bath found that “Aspies” have no such cortisol increase in the morning, yet their levels of the hormone drop off throughout the day as do everyone else’s.

"We think this difference in stress hormone levels could be really significant in explaining why children with [Asperger’s Syndrome] are less able to react and cope with unexpected change," psychology professor Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath said in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Asperger’s Syndrome is often defined as a form of high-functioning autism. Aspies often repeat behaviors and have narrow patterns of thought. Typically, they develop an obsession with a single topic or object.

Labels: asperger, autism, research

After analyzing two million DNA variations among 32,000 people, an international team of scientists identified six genes associated with obesity.

All six genes are active in the brain and influence appetite regulation.

According to the report, which was written through the German National Genome Research Network, "The two main causes of obesity are poor nutrition and lack of physical activity. But the biology of these genes suggests genetic factors underlying the different reaction of people to lifestyle and environmental conditions."

Labels: genetics, obesity, research

The University of Dallas in Texas is seeking $20 million in grants to develop a web-based program to teach strategic reasoning to middle school students.

Scientists at the UTD Center for Brain Health have already created a program called SMART (Strategic Memory and Reasoning Training) for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Teens who participate in the SMART program learn how to block details and organize information into main ideas, rather than to just memorize facts.

"The frontal lobes, the area of the brain associated with critical thinking and reasoning, develop rapidly through adolescence," said Dr. Sandra Chapman, director of the UTD Center. "High-level reasoning and critical thinking are skills that have to be learned and practiced. If teens do not acquire the ability to learn strategically, they might never do so."

Chapman noted that the United States ranks 24th out of 29 developed countries in critical thinking.

"We're missing the critical brain years and building a brain that does not reason," she said.

Labels: reasoning, research, students

A study from Yale University's School of Medicine found a link between suicide in children and bullying or being bullied.

Dr. Young-Shin Kim wrote in the International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health that bullying victims were two to nine times more likely to think about killing themselves. Children who are bullies themselves are also at higher risk.

Dr. Kim analyzed 37 studies of bullying, which experts estimate between 10 and 50 percent of all children. Kim noted she did not know if other factors make certain children more susceptible to both bullying and suicide.

"While there is no definitive evidence that bullying makes kids more likely to kill themselves, there is a likely association," Kim wrote. "We can act on it and try to prevent it."

Read The Social Consequences of Being the Victim of a Bully for more information.

Labels: bullying, research, suicide

As blended families become more common, researchers and child development experts are beginning to turn their attention not only to stepmoms, but to stepdads. In a rare kind of study out of the University of London, researchers found that stepdads often struggle to connect with their step-kids.

"While stepparents of either gender tend to be aloof, stepdads are more likely than stepmoms to fight with teenage children, especially if the child is a boy, says Erini Flouri, lead author of the study... Stepdads were more likely than biological fathers to see their step-teens as hyperactive or badly behaved, the researchers found."

The good news is that dads who were more attentive to their kids - whether they were step- or biological children - had strong positive impacts on their kids. Experts suggest that parents of stepfamilies need to recognize the additional stress that's put on all family members and find productive, positive ways to talk through that stress. Read more at MSNBC.com.

Labels: perceptions, research, step_parents

Researchers at the University of Michigan are calling for restrictions on teen driving at night and on weekends, after studying seventeen years of records of automobile crashes.

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute scholars went through data from 7000 teenage drivers and recommended that teens be licensed to drive in a series of phases. In Phase 1, they could drive only if a licensed adult driver were in the car. In later phases, they could have passengers in the car and drive at night or weekends.

The researchers found that teen drivers are two and a half times more likely to be involved in an automobile accident than adult drivers, and their risk increases at night, on weekends and when there are passengers in the car.

Other states, including California, already have such granulated licenses for adolescents.

By sending your teen off to a private boarding school you can reduce his or her need to drive. Learn more about the safe, secure environments of private boarding schools at BoardingSchoolsInfo.com.

Labels: driving, research, safety

Cell phone use is linked to headaches, insomnia and confusion, according to a report in the British journal, The Independent.

Scientists asked 70 people to talk on their cell phones before they went to bed and found that such usage shortened the stages of deep sleep. The study also linked such sleep disturbances to depression, mood swings, ADHD symptoms and personality changes in teenagers.

"This study strongly suggests that mobile phone use is associated with specific changes in the areas of the brain responsible for activating and coordinating the stress system," according to the report.

Last week the Federal Drug Administration called for more scientific studies of the long-range effects of cell phone use on health, especially since more people are using the phones at very young ages.

Looking for programs for troubled teens? Aspen Ranch offers animal assisted therapy and other ways to help troubled teens.

Labels: cell_phones, research, sleep_deprivation

A new study from the University of Western Ontario indicates that peer groups can influence children to behave in ways similar to the group.

Researchers studied 526 children in grades five through eight, asking them to classify their classmates into groups such as "popular," "nice kids," and "physically aggressive." The children who were in the "nice" group did not change over the course of the study. However, children in the "cool and popular" group changed their behaviors to live up to the peer group. Likewise, children in the deviant groups engaged in more risky behaviors and became more disliked over time.

This study appears in the July/August issue of Child Development.

Therapeutic boarding schools, like Oakley School in Utah, offer college prep academics in addition to therapy and counseling.

Labels: behavior, influences, research

Children who have been sexually abused benefit from psychological interventions, although many can improve on their own, according to a new study from Western Illinois University and Northern Illinois University.

Professors Melanie Hetzel-Riggins, Amy Braugh, and Brad Montgomery analyzed the results of twenty-eight studies on sexually abused teenagers and children. They concluded that those who undergo cognitive-behavioral therapy or abuse-specific therapy achieve the best results, especially if it is a long-term therapy. Therapies ideally tailored to each individual work best. If the abuse occurred within the child's family system, it is harder to treat.

This study appears in the August 2007 issue of Child Sexual Abuse and Neglect.

Equine therapy or Animal assisted therapy can reach kids who haven't responded to traditional talk therapy. Visit Animal-assistedTherapy.com to learn more.

Labels: abuse, research, therapy

Depending on the type of damage to a certain gene, a person may develop either depression or schizophrenia, according to new research from an international group of scholars from Great Britain, Canada and Japan.

Researchers studied mice with two types of damage to a gene known as DISC1. This gene plays a key role in learning, memory and mood. Depending on the kind of damage to this gene, mice responded more positively to drug treatments used to treat schizophrenia or depression.

Dr. David Porteous of the University of Edinburgh said, "While the causes of schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and major depression are unknown, all evidence points to subtle differences in the way the brain develops and to chemical changes in the brain. Our work identified the DISC1 gene as an important risk factor in these types of mental diseases."

Dr. Porteous and others in Great Britain are working with scientists from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada and RIKEN institute in Japan to help pinpoint which patients will respond best to which specific treatments.

Labels: depression, research, schizophrenia

Teens who have sex at earlier ages than their peer group are at more risk for juvenile delinquency later.

A study of over 7,000 teenagers indicates that those who had sex at younger ages were 20% more likely to participate in illegal acts a year later such as painting graffiti, damaging property, stealing and selling drugs.

"We did not find that sex itself leads to delinquency, but that beginning sexual relationships long before your friends is cause for concern," said Stacy Armour, co-author of the study and a doctoral student at Ohio State University.

Researchers used data collected from students at 132 high schools and middle schools in 1994. The students were re-interviewed a year later and again in 2002. Students at each individual school had a different average age for initial sexual intercourse that ranged from 11.25 years to 17.5 years. Students were compared only to students at their own schools.

Armour said that the connection between early sex and juvenile delinquency has to do with the entire context of a person’s life. This study appears in the February 2007 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Labels: juvenile delinquency, research, sex

College students suffer from too much self-esteem, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists at San Diego State University.

Because their self-involvement is at record high, this generation of young people might pose a threat to society.

People who are in love with themselves are "more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, be at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and exhibit game-playing, dishonesty and over-controlling and violent behaviors," according to lead author Dr. Jean Twenge. Narcissists tend to promote themselves, lack empathy for others, and overreact to criticism. She said that today's youth exhibit record high narcissism.

Dr. Twenge and her colleagues examined answers to personality questionnaires filled out by 16,475 college students between 1982 and 2006. Known as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the form requires yes and no responses to statements such as, "I think I am a special person," "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," and "I can live my life anyway I want to."

The researchers found that narcissism has steadily increased since 1982. About two-thirds of today's college students have above-average scores. This is 30 percent more than in 1982.

Dr. Twenge believes that a "self-esteem movement" begun in schools in the 1980s fueled the change.

Labels: behavior, narcissism, research

Over 40% of children ages 10 to 17 who used computers told researchers that they have looked at pornography online, according to a new study by the University of New Hampshire. This represents a 25% increase from a similar study in 2000. The study compared children's internet use between 2004-2005 with that of 1999-2000.

The good news from the study was that children were experiencing less sexual solicitation on line, but there were increases in reports of bullying and harassment. This study appears in the February issue of Pediatrics.

Labels: internet, pediatrics, research

Canadian researchers found that parents who do not finish high school are more likely to have children who have problems learning to read and write.

Professor Linda Phillips, director of the Canadian Center for Research on Literacy, said the results were so definitive that her researchers could predict how well children would do on early childhood screening tests just based on their parents' educational levels.

This study is included in a book entitled "Family Literacy Matters," published by Temeron Books Inc.

Labels: education, research

Years ago, scientific studies indicated that parents who argue a lot have children with conduct disorders.

Now a new study concludes that argumentative parents probably pass on genes for conduct problems.

A research team led by Dr. Paige Harden at the University of Virginia studied 1,045 twins and their 2,051 children. The team concluded that genetics, not marital conflicts, caused children's conduct disorders.

Children with conduct disorders exhibit a range of misbehaviors such as skipping school, bullying, shoplifting, lying, and running away from home.

This study appears in the January/February 2007 issue of the journal, Child Development.

Labels: behavior, research, role models