Tag Archives: Children and Families

Dr. Wilda Reviews health book: ‘The A to Z of Children’s Health’

31 Oct

Moi received a complimentary copy of the A to Z of Children’s Health. Here are the details from Amazon:

•Paperback: 448 pages

•Authors: Dr. Jeremy Friedman, Dr. Natasha Saunders, and Dr. Norman Saunders

•Publisher: Robert Rose (September 19, 2013)

•Language: English

•ISBN-10: 0778804607

•ISBN-13: 978-0778804604

•Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches

•Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

•Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item

•Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Here is what the authors say about the book:

The A to Z of Children’s Health

September 30, 2013

There has been an enormous increase in the amount of information at our fingertips since the growth of the Internet and, more recently, social media. The majority of parents in North America now have access to medical and parenting advice at the click of a mouse or with the touch of a fingertip. So why publish a book of medical advice for parents on how to deal with all of their children’s symptoms from A to Z and everything in between?

In some ways, the need is greater now than a generation or two ago, when Dr. Spock was one of our only options. The reason is that much of what you read on the web and information shared through social media is sincere in its intent but generally strongly held personal opinion and conviction. Convincing yes, but not always in context, accurate, or even true. Certainly, in most cases, not based on the latest scientific evidence or consensus among children’s health?care providers.

Our book meets this need for evidence-based information and advice published in an accessible format. We will guide you through your questions about your child’s health, advise you when you should be seeking help, and give you practical tips and strategies that will help you to avoid having to spend countless hours in your provider’s waiting room or, even worse, in an emergency care center.

This book is written by a dozen of the top pediatricians at the Hospital for Sick Children (a.k.a. SickKids), recognized internationally as one of the best children’s hospitals in the world. SickKids is not only renowned for the outstanding clinical care provided to its young patients and their families, but this hospital is a leader in educating patients, families, and the next generation of pediatric health-care providers, as well as a powerhouse of research, providing the evidence behind the latest and best treatments and care for children worldwide.

— Jeremy Friedman and Natasha Saunders

http://www.robertrose.ca/article/z-children%E2%80%99s-health

Here is background about the authors:

By: Jeremy Friedman, MB.ChB, FRCPC, FAAP

By: Natasha Saunders, MD, MSc, FRCPC

By: Norman Saunders, MD, FRCP (C)

An indispensable reference that is sure to become the go-to health & wellness guide for parents.

This comprehensive and contemporary guide is written by the pediatric experts at the world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). It goes without saying that no one understands kids better than these experts.

The guide covers over 235 childhood conditions and illnesses in children ages newborn to ten in a friendly yet authoritative manner.
All the illnesses and conditions are arranged alphabetically, making it easy, quick and accessible for parents — for those situations when time really is of the essence!

Parents will find expert advice on how to cope with everything from common accidents and emergencies like fever and abdominal pain to conditions such as spina bifida, infective endocarditis and shingles. Photos and diagrams are featured throughout so parents can accurately pinpoint what potential condition and/or illness their child may be experiencing.

This book addresses virtually every question a parent might have, and knowing that this kind of help is available, on any topic that may arise, provides the reassurance every parent needs and wants.

Dr. Jeremy Friedman, MB.ChB, FRCPC, FAAP is the associate Pediatrician-in-Chief at The Hospital for Sick Children and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto. He is also the father of two young children.

Dr. Natasha Saunders, MD, MSc, FRCPC, is the mother of a busy toddler, and a staff pediatrician at the hospital for sick Children and Rouge Valley health system in Toronto. She’s completing an Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Dr. Norman Saunders, MD, FRCPC, was a renowned and hugely respected general pediatrician with over 3 decades of experience. He was also a staff paediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children and an Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto

http://www.robertrose.ca/book/z-childrens-health

The concise review is parents and caregivers should buy this book because it is an essential part of a caregivers tool kit. If you are attending a baby shower or welcoming new parents home from the hospital, you might consider making the book a gift. Moi began her process of review by going to the Mayo Clinic site to find out the issues that folks seek information about.

The Mayo Clinic lists issues in Children’s Health Questions and Answers:

Children’s Health Questions and Answers

Review all Children’s Health questions and answers:
•ADHD diet: Do food additives cause hyperactivity?
•ADHD: Does caffeine help?
•Albuterol side effects: What’s normal?
•Angelman’s syndrome
•Autism treatment: Can chelation therapy help?
•Autism treatment: Can special diets help?
•Autistic spectrum disorders
•Baby sign language: A good idea?
•Baby teeth: When do children start losing them?
•Baby walkers: Are they safe?
•Bipolar disorder in children: Is it possible?
•Calcium-fortified juice: A good source of calcium for kids?
•Child growth: Can you predict adult height?
•Childhood schizophrenia: How early can it be diagnosed?
•Coxsackievirus in children: How serious is it?
•Crohn’s disease in children: Are growth delays permanent?
•Croup treatment: Does high humidity relieve symptoms?
•’Cutting’ weight: A safe practice for youth wrestlers?
•Depression treatment for children: What works?
•Dystonia treatment: Can it impair bone growth?
•Flu shots for kids: Does my child need a flu shot?
•Fruit juice: Good or bad for kids?
•Gray hair in child
•Ketotic hypoglycemia in children: What causes it?
•Kids and caffeine: An unhealthy combination?
•Kohler’s disease: Does it cause permanent bone damage?
•Multivitamins: Do young children need them?
•Older fathers and autism risk: Is there a connection?
•Osteoporosis: Can kids get it too?
•Peanut allergy: Can a child outgrow it?
•Recurring strep throat: When is tonsillectomy useful?
•Septo-optic dysplasia
•Sleep apnea in young children
•Stuttering in children: Is it normal?
•Sugar: Does it cause ADHD?
•Tummy time: How much does your baby need?
•Urinary tract infections in children: Are bubble baths a culprit?
•Using an oral thermometer: How do I clean it?
•Warm-mist vs. cool-mist humidifier: Which is better for a cold?
•Weight-loss surgery: Safe for kids?
•http://www.riversideonline.com/health_reference/Childrens-Health/q-and-a.cfm

See, Kids.gov http://kids.usa.gov/health-and-safety/health/index.shtml
Next, moi started looking through the A to Z of Children’s Health.

The book is well organized alphabetically by topic. The charts are phenomenal. See, the chart for chronic abdominal pain at pp. 26-27. There are really useful info boxes throughout the book. Info heading include topics like:

Diagnosis

What Causes ____

How Treated

Goals of Treatment

Medications

Questions to Ask the Doctor

Red Flags

Doc Talk

The book is well written and published on good quality paper. There are pictures of a diverse population. Information is highlighted so that those seeking information will easily find a topic.

Dr. Wilda HIGHLY RECOMMENDS the A to Z of Children’s Health.

Other Reviews:

Book review: ‘The A to Z of Children’s Health’

http://long-island.newsday.com/kids/long-island-parent-talk-1.3679226/book-review-the-a-to-z-of-children-s-health-1.6238900

The A to Z of Children’s Health

http://lifetakesover.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/the-a-to-z-of-childrens-health/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©

http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©

http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©

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Stanford University study: Sexualization of women in the tech world

21 Oct

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Eliana Dockterman reported in the Time article, How Using Sexy Female Avatars in Video Games Changes Women:

It’s not “just a game.”

The debate over whether we should worry about little boys playing violent video games never seems to die down. But maybe we should be fretting just as much about little girls playing those same games. Women who used sexy avatars to represent themselves in video games were more likely to objectify themselves in real life. Not only that, they were more likely to accept what’s called rape myth — i.e., the idea that a woman is in some way to blame for her rape — according to a Stanford study published on Oct. 11 in Computers and Human Behavior.

We’ve known for a long time that the oversexualization of women has a negative impact on the female psyche: one experiment asked women to try on either a bikini or a sweater; those who tried on a bikini reported feeling shame about their bodies and performed more poorly on a math test than their sweater-wearing counterparts. And studies have shown that sexualization of women in the media can negatively impact young girls’ body image. It’s for that very reason that moms worry about their daughters watching the Video Music Awards.

But playing Lara Croft — the wasp-waisted, impossibly large-breasted protagonist in the Tomb Raider video-game series who fights bad guys in an ever-so-practical tight tank top and short shorts — might be worse than watching Miley Cyrus twerking in a bikini. Researchers have demonstrated that embodying characters in virtual worlds has a stronger effect on gamers than just passively watching a character; game play can influence off-line beliefs, attitudes and action thanks to a phenomenon called the Proteus effect in which an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital identity.

And if your avatar resembles you (i.e., you’re playing with a dopplegänger), the game can make an even greater impression. Previous studies have shown playing with a dopplegänger can lead the user to replicate the dopplegänger’s eating patterns, experience physiological arousal or prefer a brand of product endorsed by the dopplegänger. Given that connection, this new study looked at whether embodying sexualized female avatars online changed women’s behavior.

The Stanford researchers asked 86 women ages 18 to 40 to play using either a sexualized (sexily dressed) avatar or a nonsexualized (conservatively dressed) avatar. Then, researchers designed some of those avatars to look like the player embodying them.

Those women who played using sexualized avatars who looked like them were more accepting of the rape myth, according to the study. After playing the game, women responded to many questions with answers along a five-point scale (from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”), including, “In the majority or rapes, the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation.” Those who played sexy avatars who looked like themselves were more likely to answer “agree” or “strongly agree” than those women who had nonsexy avatars who did not look like them.

Participants were also asked to freewrite their thoughts after the study. Those with sexualized avatars were more likely to self-objectify in their essays after play.

How Using Sexy Female Avatars in Video Games Changes Women

Here is the citation for the study:

Computers in Human Behavior The embodiment of sexualized virtual selves: The Proteus effect

and experiences of self-objectification via avatars

Jesse Fox⇑

, Jeremy N. Bailenson1

, Liz Tricase 2

Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94040, USA

http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/fox-chb-sexualized-virtual-selves.pdf

Moi wrote in Sexualization of girls: A generation looking much too old for their maturity level:

Just ride the bus, go to the mall or just walk down a city street and one will encounter young girls who look like they are ten going on thirty. What’s going on with that? Moi wrote about the sexualization of girls in Study: Girls as young as six think of themselves as sex objects:

In Children too sexy for their years, moi said:

Maybe, because some parents may not know what is age appropriate for their attire, they haven’t got a clue about what is appropriate for children. There is nothing sadder than a 40 something, 50 something trying to look like they are twenty. What wasn’t sagging when you are 20, is more than likely than not, sagging now.

Kristen Russell Dobson, the managing editor of Parent Map, has a great article in Parent Map. In Are Girls Acting Sexy Too Young?

http://www.parentmap.com/article/are-girls-acting-sexy-too-young

The culture seems to be sexualizing children at an ever younger age and it becomes more difficult for parents and guardians to allow children to just remain, well children, for a bit longer. Still, parents and guardians must do their part to make sure children are in safe and secure environments. A pole dancing fourth grader is simply unacceptable.

Moi loves fashion and adores seeing adult looks on adults. Many 20 and 30 somethings prefer what I would charitably call the “slut chic” look. This look is questionable fashion taste, in my opinion, but at least the look involves questionable taste on the part of adults as to how they present themselves to the public. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/children-too-sexy-for-their-years/

https://drwilda.com/tag/study-girls-as-young-as-6-are-thinking-of-selves-as-sex-objects/

Steve Biddulph wrote in the Daily Mail article, The corruption of a generation: In a major Mail series, a renowned psychologist argues that our daughters are facing an unprecedented crisis… sexualisiation from primary school age:

Over the past few years, I’ve discussed the issue of modern girlhood with numerous friends and colleagues, and everyone has observed the same phenomenon: girls are simply growing up too fast.

To put it bluntly, our 18 is their 14. Our 14 is their 10. Never before has girlhood been under such a sustained assault — from ads, alcohol marketing, girls’ magazines, sexually explicit TV programmes and the hard pornography that’s regularly accessed in so many teenagers’ bedrooms.

The result is that many girls effectively lose four years of crucial development, which may take years in therapy to retrieve. Meanwhile, these girls are filling our mental clinics, police stations and hospitals in unprecedented numbers. Not only that, but having sex with lots of different boys is not good for their bodies. Levels of sexual infections are soaring — including chlamydia, which may affect their fertility.

Less well-known is the fact that the rapid surge in the numbers of girls who perform oral sex is leading to a far greater incidence of mouth and throat cancers.

So why are so many girls succumbing to sexual pressures? And what can we, as parents, do to protect our daughters from the very real perils of our modern world?

The first thing to be said is that the current generation is, at least in one unenviable sense, utterly unique: it’s the first to grow up exposed to hard-core pornography.

Sexting: Girls as young as ten years old are now sending sexual images of themselves on their phones (picture posed by models)

In a recent survey, 53 per cent of girls under 13 reported that they had watched or seen porn. By the age of 16, that figure rose to 97 per cent.

‘My child wouldn’t go looking for porn,’ you may say. But your child doesn’t have to be looking: porn will find them….

SOME TOP TIPS ON HOW TO KEEP YOUR DAUGHTERS SAFE

Remove all digital media from your daughter’s bedroom, including the TV. Have a rule that all members of the family charge and leave their phones in the kitchen each night.

Make sure she’s using the maximum privacy settings online. Some parents make it a condition that for a child to have an account on social media, she must have you as a ‘friend’.

Know the rules. Children aren’t supposed to have a Facebook account until they’re 13. They may feel left out, but you need to be firm.

Either download or have devices installed on your home computers that filter out porn. Ask your daughter to use her computer only in the kitchen, study or living room.

Set limits on time allowed for social networking.

Keep the channels of communication open, so that if your daughter sees something online which distresses her, she won’t be ashamed to tell you about it. If you suspect that your daughter is visiting sites that are harmful, raise it with her. Intervene.

Know the law. If an 18-year-old posts sexualised images of younger people, he or she is at risk of criminal charges.

Never snoop around in your daughter’s bedroom — but do check her phone if you suspect she’s being sent sexual texts or images. Sexting is public behaviour, because anyone can view images or texts and pass them on. And parents have a better understanding of the possible consequences. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2264781/Corrupting-generation-In-new-major-Mail-series-renowned-psychologist-Steve-Biddulph-argues-daughters-facing-unprecedented-crisis.html#ixzz2IRmlHbbz

Sexualization of girls: A generation looking much too old for their maturity level

Here is the press release from Stanford about the study;

Stanford Report, October 10, 2013

Sexualized avatars affect the real world, Stanford researchers find

A Stanford study shows that after women wear sexualized avatars in a virtual reality world, they feel objectified and are more likely to accept rape myths in the real world. The research could have implications for the role of female characters in video games.

BY CYNTHIA MCKELVEY

Researchers at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab are delving into questions posed by sexualized depictions of women in video games.

Specifically, do female players who use provocatively dressed avatars begin to see themselves more as objects and less as human beings? Jeremy Bailenson, the director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford, has found a way to use virtual reality to answer that question.

This and other issues take on real-world significance as the numbers of female video game players rise despite the industry’s general lack of relatable female characters and as notoriously violent video games (such as the popular Rockstar Games series, Grand Theft Auto V) continue their rise in popularity.

“We often talk about video game violence and how it affects people who play violent video games,” Bailenson said. “I think it’s equally important to think about sexualization.”

Bailenson is particularly interested in the Proteus Effect: how the experience of acting in a virtual body, known as an avatar, changes people’s behavior in both the virtual and real worlds. For example, when someone wears an avatar that is taller than his actual self, he will act more confidently. People who see the effects of exercise on their bodies in the virtual world will exercise more in the real world.

Proteus Effect and sexualization

Bailenson and co-author Jesse Fox published a research paper in the journal Computers in Human Behavior that examined how becoming a sexualized avatar affected women’s perceptions of themselves. Participants donned helmets that blocked out the real world, immersing them in a virtual world of 3-D sight and sound. Motion sensors on their wrists and ankles allowed for the lab’s many infrared cameras to record their motions as they moved identically in both worlds.

Once in the new world, each participant looked in a virtual mirror and saw herself or another woman, dressed provocatively or conservatively. The avatar’s movements in the mirror perfectly copied the participant’s actual physical movements, allowing her to truly feel as if she occupied that body.

The researchers then introduced a male accomplice into the virtual world to talk to the participant. What seemed like a normal, get-to-know-you conversation was actually an assessment of how much the women viewed themselves as objects. Women “wearing” the sexualized avatars bearing their likenesses talked about their bodies, hair and dress more than women in the other avatars, suggesting that they were thinking of themselves more as objects than as people.

After their time in the virtual world, the participants filled out a questionnaire rating how much they agreed with various statements. Bailenson and Fox folded rape myths such as “in the majority of rapes, the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation” into the questionnaire. Participants rated how much they agreed or disagreed with the statements.

The participants who had worn the sexualized avatars tended to agree with rape myths more than the women who had worn the non-sexualized avatars. Women in sexualized avatars whose faces resembled their own agreed with the myths more than anyone else in the study.

Becoming the protagonist

The Entertainment Software Association estimates that across mobile, PC and console platforms, 45 percent of American gamers are female. But few game titles feature female protagonists. In many popular games in this fast-growing industry, female characters are in the minority; more often than not, they are sexualized.

Many female gamers assert that gaming culture is not welcoming to women. The websitenotinthekitchenanymore.com collects user-submitted accounts of sexual harassment women experience in online platforms such as Xbox Live. When women critique sexism in games and gamer culture, they are often dismissed or even bullied. Pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian faced a barrage of cyber-bullying – including threats of rape and death – for announcing a project examining common tropes of female characters in video games.

Some gamers maintain that virtual worlds and the real world remain mutually exclusive, but the research by Bailenson and Fox suggests differently. “It changes the way you think about yourself online and offline,” Bailenson said. “It used to be passive and you watched the characters. You now enter the media and become the protagonist. You become the characters.”

Cynthia McKelvey is an intern at the Stanford News Service

Media Contact

Dan Stober, Stanford News Service: (650) 721-6965, dstober@stanford.edu

Dr. Wilda has been just saying for quite a while.

Resources

Popwatch’s Miley Cyrus Pole Dance Video

http://popwatch.ew.com/2009/08/10/miley-cyrus-pole-dancing-at-the-teen-choice-awards-rather-unfortunate-yes/

Baby Center Blog Comments About Miley Cyrus Pole Dance

http://blogs.babycenter.com/celebrities/billy-ray-cyrus-defends-mileys-artistic-pole-dancing/

The Sexualization of Children

http://www.tellinitlikeitis.net/2009/03/the-sexualization-of-children-and-adolescents-epidemic.html

Related:

Let’s speak the truth: Values and character training are needed in schools

Let’s speak the truth: Values and character training are needed in schools

Do ‘grown-ups’ have to be reminded to keep their clothes on in public? Apparently so

Do ‘grown-ups’ have to be reminded to keep their clothes on in public? Apparently so

Where information leads to Hope. ©Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©

http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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Prince Georges County recognizes that fathers matter

20 Oct

Moi wrote in Hard question: Does indigenous African-American culture support academic success?
Jesse Washington of AP has written a comprehensive article which details the magnitude of the disaster which is occurring in the African-American community. In the article, Blacks Struggle With 72% Unwed Mother Rate
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39993685/ns/ which was posted at NBC News Washington sounds an alarm which if you can’t hear it, makes you deaf.

This is not about racism or being elitist. This is about survival of an indigenous American culture. This is not about speaking the truth to power, it is about speaking the truth. The truth is children need two parents to help them develop properly and the majority of single parent headed families will live in poverty. Children from single parent homes have more difficult lives. So called “progressives” who want to make their “Sex and the City” life style choices the norm because they have a difficult time dealing with the emotional wreckage of their lives, need to shut-up when it comes to the survival of the African American community. This is an issue that the so called educated classes and religious communities have to get involved in.

Trip Gabriel reported about more fallout from the failure of the African-American family in the New York Times. In Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
Brian M. Rosenthal’s Seattle Times article reports about the achievement gap between native African-Americans and immigrant African ethnic groups in Seattle.

In the article, ‘Alarming’ new test-score gap discovered in Seattle schools,Rosenthal reports:

African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home — typically immigrants or refugees — according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools.
District officials, who presented the finding at a recent community meeting at Rainier Beach High School, noted the results come with caveats, but called the potential trend troubling and pledged to study what might be causing it.
Michael Tolley, an executive director overseeing Southeast Seattle schools, said at the meeting that the data exposed a new achievement gap that is “extremely, extremely alarming.”
The administration has for years analyzed test scores by race. It has never before broken down student-achievement data by specific home language or country of origin — it is rare for school districts to examine test scores at that level — but it is unlikely that the phenomenon the data suggest is actually new.
In fact, some national experts said the trend represented by the Seattle data is not surprising. They pointed to some studies about college attendance and achievement indicating that immigrant families from all backgrounds tend to put a larger emphasis on education than those families that have been in the country longer.
Traditional factors in low performance, such as poverty and single-parent homes, are generally shared by black immigrants and nonimmigrants alike….
The results, although preliminary, were eye-opening:
• Only 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade’s math test, while 47 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Other black ethnic groups did even better, although still lower than the district average of 70 percent.
• In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Again, other black ethnic groups did better, though still lower than the district average of 78 percent.
The numbers do have significant limitations, Teoh said. That’s because they are based on home-language information that is entirely self-reported, and the data exclude English Language Learners — an optional program for students who score poorly on an English proficiency test.
Most of all, Teoh said, because the English-speaking category includes students of many black ethnic groups, it’s impossible to compare specific ethnic groups.
At the recent community meeting, much of that distinction was lost on the parents in the audience.
“It’s very alarming that students that were born right here are at the bottom of the barrel,” said Vallerie Fisher, whose daughter is a senior at Rainier Beach. “How is that possible?”
Immigrant experience
The answer to that question may lie in the culture of immigrant families, national education experts said.
Many of those families, who often were relatively wealthy and well-educated in their home countries, have strong social-support systems that emphasize education, said Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Pamela Bennett, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, agreed. She conducted a study in 2009 that found that immigrant black high-school graduates attend college at a much higher rate than black or white students born in the U.S. The reason was that the immigrants had a higher socioeconomic background, she said.
But that explanation may falter when Seattle’s Somali population is considered.
Many of the Somalis, after all, did not follow a normal pattern of immigration. Their families came to the U.S. to escape their war-torn country, many by way of refugee camps. But they still did better than English-speaking African Americans on the tests.
Veronica Gallardo, the director of international programs for Seattle Public Schools, speculated that the trauma experienced by Somali families causes them to value the opportunity education provides. In addition, Somali community groups tend to prioritize education, said Alexandra Blum, who works with the Somali Community Services Coalition, a nonprofit that works to empower families in King County.
Seattle School Board member Betty Patu, who has worked for decades with community groups serving students of color, said she has noticed that all immigrant families, regardless of socioeconomic status, place high value on education.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017046660_newgap19m.html

Ovetta Wiggins reported in the Washington Post article, ‘Men Making a Difference Day’ brings Prince George’s County fathers to school:

Learning how to knot a necktie was one of many activities that more than 2,000 men shared with their children during Prince George’s County’s annual “Men Making a Difference Day,” which brings the county’s fathers into classrooms to promote parental involvement in the public schools.
On Monday, 100 schools across the county scheduled fun and educational activities for the men, with officials hoping that the fathers, grandfathers, uncles and other male role models would see the importance of being engaged in a child’s education and how such involvement could change a child’s life.
“It does my heart good to see these fathers, uncles, grandfathers, all these men,” Kevin Maxwell, the school system’s chief executive, told the men as they assembled in the lunchroom with students at their sides. “The difference that men make is tremendously important.”
Researchers have found that students with involved parents are more likely to earn higher grades, attend school regularly and have better social skills.
Some schools brought in motivational speakers for the day Monday. Some hosted basketball games between fathers and sons, while others simply opened their classrooms for the men to observe while the children learned.
Michael Robinson, the school system’s former director of parental engagement and community outreach, said some fathers are unable to make weekly visits to their child’s school, for a variety of reasons. But he said meaningful engagement could include buying supplies for the school, helping with homework or attending a school board meeting.
“The goal I have for this is for the fathers to be involved and to see that manifest in student performance and student behavior,” said Robinson, who started the program five years ago and continues to partner with the schools to help organize the event. “I want it to become normal for men to come into a school and ask about their children….” http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/men-making-a-difference-day-brings-prince-georges-county-fathers-to-school/2013/10/14/fc272c9a-34f1-11e3-8a0e-4e2cf80831fc_story.html

If you are a young unmarried woman of any color, you probably do not have the resources either emotional or financial to parent a child(ren). If you don’t care about your future, care about the future of your child. If you want to sleep with everything that has a pulse, that is your choice. BUT, you have no right to choose a life of poverty and misery for a child. As for those so called “progressives?” Just shut-up.
There are some very uncomfortable conversations ahead for the African-American community about the high rate of unwed mothers, about the care of women during pregnancy, and about early childhood education in the homes of children.Most important, about the lack the active involvement of fathers of some children.

Time to start talking. The conversation is not going to get any less difficult.

See:

We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/we-give-up-as-a-society-jailing-parents-because-kids-are-truant/

Jonathan Cohn’s ‘The Two Year Window’
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/jonathan-cohns-the-two-year-window/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:
COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/

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University of Oregon study: Abusive parenting may have biological link

16 Oct

Moi wrote in University of Pittsburgh study: Harsh verbal discipline is not effective;
The question is how to find a balance between “Tiger Mom” and phony self-esteem.
In No one is perfect: People sometimes fail, moi said:
The Child Development Institute has a good article about how to help your child develop healthy self esteem. A discussion of values is often difficult, but the question the stage parent, over the top little league father, or out of control soccer mom should ask of themselves is what do you really and truly value? What is more important, your child’s happiness and self esteem or your fulfilling an unfinished part of your life through your child? Joe Jackson, the winner of the most heinous stage parent award saw his dreams fulfilled with the price of the destruction of his children’s lives. Most people with a healthy dose of self esteem and sanity would say this is too high a price.
Letting Go
Sarah Mahoney wrote a good article at Parents.Com http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/self_esteem/ about four ways to let go of your kids and she describes her four steps, which she calls Independence Day. Newsweek also has an article on the fine art of letting gohttp://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/05/21/the-fine-art-of-letting-go.html
Remember it is your child’s life and they should be allowed to realize their dreams, not yours.
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/no-one-is-perfect-people-sometimes-fail/ https://drwilda.com/tag/is-tough-parenting-really-the-answer/

Science Daily reported in the article, Abusive Parenting May Have a Biological Basis:

Parents who physically abuse their children appear to have a physiological response that subsequently triggers more harsh parenting when they attempt parenting in warm, positive ways, according to new research….
Studies of child maltreatment have consistently found that parents who physically abuse their children tend to parent in more hostile, critical and controlling ways. Skowron’s team appears to have found evidence of a physiological basis for patterns of aversive parenting — the use of hostile actions such as grabbing an arm or hand or using negative verbal cues in guiding a child’s behavior — in a sample of families involved with Child Protective Services.
For the experiment, mothers and children were monitored to record changes in heart rate while playing together in the lab. Parenting behavior was scored to capture positive parenting and strict, hostile control using a standard coding system.
What emerged, Skowron said, were clear distinctions between abusive, neglectful and non-maltreating mothers in their physiological responses during parenting. When abusive mothers were more warm and nurturing, they began to experience more difficulty regulating their heart rate and staying calm. This physiological-based stress response then led the abusive mothers to become more hostile and controlling toward their child a short time later in the interaction.
The same was not the case for mothers who had been previously identified as being physically neglectful or for mothers with no history of neglectful or abusive parenting.
Participants in the National Institutes of Health-funded study were 141 mothers — 94 percent Caucasian with a high school degree or less and incomes at or below $30,000 — and their children, ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old. The research focuses on tracking the effects of physiology on parenting in real time.
“Abusive mothers who try to warmly support their child when the child faced a moderate challenge displayed a physiological response that suggested they’re stressed, on alert and preparing to defend against a threat of some kind,” said Skowron, a researcher at the Child and Family Center/Prevention Science Institute at the UO. “This kind of physiological response then led to a shift in an abusive mother becoming more hostile, strict, and controlling ways with her young child, regardless of how her child was behaving.”
The findings, she added, suggest that when physically abusive mothers experience being a nurturing parent they find it to be hard work. “It appears to quickly wear them out, perhaps because it challenges them in ways that lower-risk mothers don’t experience,” she said. “An abusive mother appears caught: When she does a good job with her child, it costs her physiologically, and it negatively affects her because it leads to more aversive parenting….”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008091742.htm#.Ul2vhaflRJg.email

Citation:

Journal Reference:
1.Elizabeth A. Skowron, Elizabeth Cipriano-Essel, Lorna Smith Benjamin, Aaron L. Pincus, Mark J. Van Ryzin. Cardiac vagal tone and quality of parenting show concurrent and time-ordered associations that diverge in abusive, neglectful, and non-maltreating mothers.. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 2013; 2 (2): 95 DOI: 10.1037/cfp0000005
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:
APA
MLA University of Oregon (2013, October 8). Abusive parenting may have a biological basis. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 16, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2013/10/131008091742.htm#.Ul2vhaflRJg.email

Here is the press release from the University of Oregon:

UO researcher finds abusive parenting may have a biological basis
EUGENE, Ore. — (Oct. 7, 2013) — Parents who physically abuse their children appear to have a physiological response that subsequently triggers more harsh parenting when they attempt parenting in warm, positive ways, according to new research.

Reporting in the quarterly journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, a five-member team, led by Elizabeth A. Skowron, a professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services in the University of Oregon College of Education, documented connections between the nervous system’s ability to calm heart rate — via electrocardiogram (ECG) measures of parasympathetic activation — and the type of parenting mothers displayed during a laboratory interaction with their preschool child.

Studies of child maltreatment have consistently found that parents who physically abuse their children tend to parent in more hostile, critical and controlling ways. Skowron’s team appears to have found evidence of a physiological basis for those patterns of aversive parenting — the use of hostile actions such as grabbing an arm or hand or using negative verbal cues in guiding a child’s behavior — in a sample of families involved with Child Protective Services.

For the experiment, mothers and children were monitored to record changes in heart rate while playing together in the lab. Parenting behavior was scored to capture positive parenting and strict, hostile control using a standard coding system.

What emerged, Skowron said, were clear distinctions between abusive, neglectful and non-maltreating mothers in their physiological responses during parenting. When abusive mothers were more warm and nurturing, they began to experience more difficulty regulating their heart rate and staying calm. This physiological-based stress response then led the abusive mothers to become more hostile and controlling toward their child a short time later in the interaction.
AUDIO:
1) Skowron on main finding, 20 seconds
2) Skowron on the challenges of intervention, 66 seconds
The same was not the case for mothers who had been previously identified as being physically neglectful or for mothers with no history of neglectful or abusive parenting.

Participants in the National Institutes of Health-funded study were 141 mothers — 94 percent Caucasian with a high school degree or less and incomes at or below $30,000 — and their children, ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old. The research focuses on tracking the effects of physiology on parenting in real time.

“Abusive mothers who try to warmly support their child when the child faced a moderate challenge displayed a physiological response that suggested they’re stressed, on alert and preparing to defend against a threat of some kind,” said Skowron, a researcher at the Child and Family Center/Prevention Science Institute at the UO. “This kind of physiological response then led to a shift in an abusive mother becoming more hostile, strict, and controlling ways with her young child, regardless of how her child was behaving.”

The findings, she added, suggest that when physically abusive mothers experience being a nurturing parent they find it to be hard work. “It appears to quickly wear them out, perhaps because it challenges them in ways that lower-risk mothers don’t experience,” she said. “An abusive mother appears caught: When she does a good job with her child, it costs her physiologically, and it negatively affects her because it leads to more aversive parenting.”

The team’s findings help to explain why abusive parenting is so resistant to most interventions, Skowron said. “Most parents who struggle with child maltreatment really love their children and want help improving their parenting skills. Our findings suggest that many are experiencing a biological response during parenting that actively interferes with their efforts to parent in warm and nurturing ways.”

The next step, she said, is exploring how to translate the new discovery into interventions specifically designed for parents struggling with child abusive. “We have to figure out how to help these high-risk parents calm themselves down more effectively and enjoy the experience of supporting their children in warm, positive ways. First, she noted, it will be important for other researchers to replicate the findings.

“Researchers at the University of Oregon continue to yield critical insights that result in more effective prevention strategies,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the UO Graduate School. “This research by Dr. Skowron revealing a potential neurobiological trigger involved in abusive parenting may lead to new interventions that could help to improve the lives of children.”

Co-authors with Skowron were Elizabeth Cipriano-Essel and Aaron L. Pincus, both of Pennsylvania State University where Skowron conducted this research, Lorna Smith Benjamin of the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute, and Mark J. Van Ryzin, research associate in the UO Child and Family Center and researcher at the Eugene-based Oregon Social Learning Center.

NIH grant RO1 MH079328 to Skowron supported the research through the National Institute of Mental Health. Additional funding was provided by the Administration for Children and Families, through its Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, as part of the Federal Child Neglect Research Consortium.

About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of “Very High Research Activity” in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

Media Contact: Jim Barlow, director of science and research communications, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu

Source: Elizabeth A. Skowron, associate professor of counseling psychology, 541-346-0913, eskowron@uoregon.edu

Additional Links:
Follow UO Science on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfOregonScience
UO Science on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UO_Research
More UO Science/Research News: http://uoresearch.uoregon.edu

Note: The University of Oregon is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. In addition, there is video access to satellite uplink, and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews. http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2013/10/uo-researcher-finds-abusive-parenting-may-have-biological-basis

The goal should be:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

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Parent involvement: Bronx’s Mercy College parent center

22 Sep

Moi wrote about the importance of parental involvement in Missouri program: Parent home visits:
One of the mantras of this blog is that education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and the school. All parts of the partnership must be involved. Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well. A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Class Matters http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/
Teachers and administrators as well as many politicians if they are honest know that children arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Teachers have to teach children at whatever point on the continuum the children are. Jay Matthews reports in the Washington Post article, Try parent visits, not parent takeovers of schools. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/try-parent-visits-not-parent-takeovers-of-schools/2012/05/30/gJQAlDDz2U_story.html
The key ingredient is parental involvement. The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (Council) has a great policy brief on parental involvement. http://www.wccf.org/pdf/parentsaspartners_ece-series.pd

Missouri program: Parent home visits

Karla Scoon Reid reported in the Education Week article, Mercy College education school reaches out:

Last fall, Mercy College opened the Bronx Parent Center to help improve student achievement by teaching, training, and supporting parents to become education advocates and active partners in their children’s schooling. The center wants to provide meaningful and individualized support for parents to assist their children academically, socially, and behaviorally from kindergarten through college.
Service Learning
The effort has also become a service-learning project for Mercy College, whose professors are donating their time to work with parents.
“This is an opportunity for our faculty to go back and work with the schools in a concerted way,” said Aramina Vega Ferrer, the center’s director and an associate professor of literacy and multilingual studies at the college.
About 200 parents have participated in the college’s workshops, and some, like Ms. Fernandez-Haghighi, have helped lead sessions. The center offers workshops throughout the school year covering topics that include strategies for children with special needs, technology, math instruction, reading, and parent leadership.
School-based parent centers are already open at two Bronx schools, and plans are underway to conduct quantitative and qualitative research to evaluate the Bronx Parent Center’s programs and identify best practices. In the future, Mercy College’s teacher-candidates will be involved with the center.
And while the center’s focus has been on Bronx public schools, which serve predominantly low-income and minority students, the college’s faculty is working with a parent group from suburban school districts in Westchester County, N.Y., as well.
“We know how to work with parents and not blame them,” stressed Ms. Ferrer, a former principal of Public School 46 in the Bronx, which also is working with the parent center. “We’re doing this to improve education.” http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/09/18/04parents.h33.html?tkn=ZZOF%2BydC5VbhI3uLSLZt0ppQj7%2BPmBWEXOG8&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=es

Patrick Rocchio reported about the programs of the center in Mercy College Parent Center opens:

The Bronx Parent Center, a new program and space to teach parents the skills that classroom teachers use to educate kids so that they can help give their own children get a leg up.
The program was designed by Mercy’s education department faculty for parents to support their children’s education through workshops, resources, and leadership development.
“The new program will help empower parents and provide them with the knowledge and the skills to support their children’s educational experience,” said Diaz, at a ribbon cutter for the new lab, for which he provided funding.
The program will empower parents as they interact with teachers and policy makers, said Diaz, who provided funding for the cendter.
He was joined by Mercy College president Kimberly Cline, who called the center “a culmination of a dream.”
School of Education dean Alfred Posamentier called it an example “for the rest of the region to follow, since we strongly believe that parents are the most neglected part of the ‘education equation.
The center will offer parents monthy workshops on topics including managing problem behavior, strategies to support special needs kids, helping with math, read-aloud strategies, parent leadership, and hands-on technology. It will so free of much educational jargon, said program director Aramina Vega Ferrer.
“We are going to talk plainly to parents, but we are going to engage them in strategies that teachers use in the classroom – we are bringing those strageies to them,” said Ferrer. “We are going to model them, have them practice it, and then we are going to observe them doing some of these things with their own children.”
The program’s seminars and study groups will be focusing on three C’s – consistant, coherent, and comprehensive, said Ferrer.

See, Mercy College Parent Center opens http://www.bxtimes.com/stories/2012/40/40_mercy_2012_10_04_bx.html and Mercy College Parent Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Msicu_UiJc
It is going to take coordination between not only education institutions, but a strong social support system to get many of children through school. This does not mean a large program directed from Washington. But, more resources at the local school level which allow discretion with accountability. For example, if I child is not coming to school because they have no shoes or winter coat, then the child gets new shoes and/or a coat. School breakfast and lunch programs must be supported and if necessary, expanded. Unfortunately, schools are now the early warning system for many families in crisis.

Related:
Tips for parent and teacher conferences

Tips for parent and teacher conferences

Common Sense Media report: Media choices at home affect school performance

Common Sense Media report: Media choices at home affect school performance

Parents can use tax deductions to pay for special education needs

Parents can use tax deductions to pay for special education needs

Intervening in the lives of truant children by jailing parents

Intervening in the lives of truant children by jailing parents

Making time for family dinner

Making time for family dinner

Embracing parents as education leaders

Embracing parents as education leaders

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States focus on chronic absenteeism

18 Sep

Moi wrote about school absenteeism In School Absenteeism: Absent from the classroom leads to absence from participation in this society:
Education is a partnership between the student, the teacher(s) and parent(s). All parties in the partnership must share the load. The student has to arrive at school ready to learn. The parent has to set boundaries, encourage, and provide support. Teachers must be knowledgeable in their subject area and proficient in transmitting that knowledge to students. All must participate and fulfill their role in the education process.
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/school-absenteeism-absent-from-the-classroom-leads-to-absence-from-participation-in-this-society/

Adrienne Liu of Stateline reported in the article, States Tackle Chronic Absence in Schools:

According to Chang, at least eight states now use student data to examine chronic absence statewide: Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island and Utah.
Chang said that states that investigate chronic absenteeism are often surprised at the extent of the problem.
According to a policy brief to be released Monday by Attendance Works:
• In Utah, 13.5 percent of students statewide were chronically absent, according to a 2012 analysis. Students who were chronically absent any year between eighth and twelfth grades were 7.4 times more likely to drop out of high school.
• In Oregon, more than 20 percent of students were chronically absent.
• In Indiana, chronic absence correlates to lower test scores and higher dropout rates for students at all income levels.
Among the states that are taking action to identify and address chronic absence:
• In California, State Superintendent of Instruction Tom Torlakson hosted a forum in May to encourage agencies to work together to fight chronic absence. Also this year, the state enacted a new school funding formula which will require every school district to monitor its chronic absence rate.
• In Hawaii, each school is required to set targets for reducing chronic absenteeism as part of its annual academic plans. The state has a data system, updated nightly, that can tell school officials which students have missed more than five percent of school days.
• In Maryland, which has tracked chronic absence longer than any other state, the public can view rates of chronic absence, average daily attendance and good attendance at every public school on the state’s report card web site. In the 2013 legislative session, lawmakers adopted a law requiring school districts to intervene when a student misses 10 percent or more of school days for unexcused reasons.
• Massachusetts and Virginia monitor chronic absence as part of their early warning systems, which track a variety of metrics and alert officials when a student might be at risk of not graduating.
In addition to the states mentioned above, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island are also cited in the study as taking steps to address chronic absence.
Individual school districts across the country also have tackled chronic absence, many quite successfully. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg convened an Interagency Task Force on Truancy, Chronic Absenteeism and School Engagement, which has launched a wide-ranging campaign to get children to school, including wake-up calls from celebrities, mentors to encourage and help students to attend school daily, and attendance meetings where teams of administrators and community partners work to boost attendance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/schools-chronic-absence_n_3937413.html?utm_hp_ref=@education123
See, Attendance Works http://www.attendanceworks.org/what-works/baltimore/

In Should we pay children to go to school? Moi said:
The disintegration of the family has profound implications for the education success of children.

Huffington Post is reporting in the article, Ohio High School Paying Students To Show Up, Behave In Class:
A Cincinnati high school is paying its students to go to school.

The Dohn Community High School, a charter school in Ohio, started a program this week that would pay seniors $25 weekly and underclassmen $10 weekly in Visa gift cards for showing up to class every day, being on time and behaving in school. The move aims to encourage students to stay in school and graduate from the school where 90 percent of its students live in poverty. Fewer than 20 percent are in two-parent households.
“Money is important to them,” school Chief Administrative Officer Ken Furrier told CBS Cleveland. “We can’t teach them if they’re not here.”
Every week a student is paid, an additional $5 goes into a savings account, payable upon graduation. The program is being funded by $40,000 from several areas, including private donors and federal Workforce Investment Act dollars funneled through the Easter Seals, a community-based health agency, KMSP-TV reports.
“The target is graduation,” Furrier told Reuters. “We do almost everything we can to get the kids to there.”
Critics say the school is rewarding students for basic things students should be doing already, but at Dohn, “they’re not doing it,” Principal Ramone Davenport told KMSP-TV. “We’ve tried everything else.”
Davenport tells the Associated Press that the program is already working and attendance is up. Dohn was designated by the Ohio Department of Education as an “academic emergency” last year, with just a 14 percent graduation rate during the 2010-2011 academic year.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/ohio-high-school-paying-s_n_1280227.html?ref=email_share

This school is dealing with the reality of certain education settings because they have not absorbed from their upbringing the thought that education is crucial to later success in life. Further, these children often face emotional and economic challenges because of their family circumstance. In answer to whether children should be paid to come to school and achieve – for some children, this may be an option.https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/should-we-pay-children-to-go-to-school/

Related:

We give up as a society: Jailing parents because kids are truant
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/we-give-up-as-a-society-jailing-parents-because-kids-are-truant/

Hard truths: The failure of the family
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/hard-truths-the-failure-of-the-family/

Johns Hopkins University report about school absenteeism

Johns Hopkins University report about school absenteeism

See:

Don’t skip: Schools waking up on absenteeism
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44704948/ns/today-education_nation/t/dont-skip-schools-waking-absenteeism/

School Absenteeism, Mental Health Problems Linked
http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/12/25/school-absenteeism-mental-health-problems-linked/32937.html

A National Portrait of Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades
http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_771.html

Resources:
US Department Of Education Helping Series which are a number of pamphlets to help parents and caregivers
http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/hyc.html

How Parents Can Help Their Child Prepare for School Assignments
http://mathandreadinghelp.org/how_can_parents_help_their_child_prepare_for_school_assignments.html

Getting Young Children Ready to Learn
http://www.classbrain.com/artread/publish/article_37.shtml

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Spend more time with your child than your IPhone, Blackberry, Droid or Windows phone

13 May

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART:  Some folk view pets and children as accessories like Prada bags. James R. Hagerty writes in the Wall Street Journal article, This North Dakota Mom, 77, Reared 69 Kids: Mrs. Dumont Reared Kids Over Six Decades; ‘I’m Child No. 23’:

As a parent, Mrs. Dumont’s style is to demonstrate rather than shout. When she found one boy’s stash of marijuana, she flushed it down a toilet. Her tears could stop a sibling squabble. When a daughter sneaked out of middle school, Mrs. Dumont took her hand and silently led her back, then sat next to her all through typing class. It was so embarrassing that “I never skipped school again,” says that daughter, Marilyn Ruberry, now a bookkeeper in Raymond, Alberta.

Mrs. Dumont’s advice on parenting is simple: “All children want is something stable. They want to know that you love them. It doesn’t have to be love with big computers and fancy clothes and all of that. Just that you care.”

As for rules, “I’d insist that they have to do something with their lives—and actually they have.”

Their occupations today include teacher, nurse, welding-shop owner and plumber.

Her debut as a mom was inauspicious. When she graduated from high school, she recalled, “I was 18 years old, and I thought I was really smart, so I decided to marry this guy.” She and her late first husband had six children together and roamed the country from Illinois to California, but the marriage broke down.

While he was away for a few days, she says, she hired a moving crew to uproot the entire house and haul it to a plot in another part of Dunseith, a town of about 800 people.

When her husband returned, he found only the front steps where the family home had stood. Divorce ensued.

As a newly single mom in the late 1960s, she worked as a teacher’s aide by day and restaurant cook by night. “Sometimes, boy, it got really slim,” she said of the family budget. Her eldest son, Rocky Davis, helped care for his brothers and sisters. “We learned how to cook early,” said Mr. Davis, who remembers being “basically the dad of the house.”

Mrs. Dumont obtained a state grant to pay for nursing school. Around that time, she met Jim Fandrick, a divorced truck driver who was raising two children. At first she was reluctant to date him. He won her over by saying, “Let’s go to the movies with the kids.” They married in 1970 and were together till he died of cancer 32 years later.

In 2003, she married Mr. Dumont, who had three kids and was taking care of a grandchild.

Mrs. Dumont now has help running the household from Lucille Vivier, 50. “I’m child No. 23,” Ms. Vivier explained as she cleared plastic plates off the table. At age 14, Ms. Vivier took refuge at Mrs. Dumont’s house after she left a troubled home. Mrs. Dumont “saved my life, both physically and spiritually,” said Ms. Vivier, an English teacher and poet.

Two years ago, Mrs. Dumont retired from her career as a nurse. She and her husband receive Social Security payments, and the three recently adopted children qualify for Medicaid insurance. Some of her grown children drop off household supplies when they see she is running short. The Dumonts occasionally dole out $5 allowances to their latest adopted children—Shaniel, Hennessey, and Adam—who call that money their “unemployment.”

Mrs. Dumont drives a 1995 Buick. She doesn’t have a cellphone or use a computer. Her one-story beige house, on a hillside surrounded by oak and birch trees, has only three small bedrooms, but there are two beds in the living room and more in the basement to handle the occasional overflow.

In one corner of her living room, rainwater has punctured a ceiling panel. “My roof busted in,” Mrs. Dumont explained. “I had a pail there.”  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324744104578471503624865878.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsFifth

Now, contrast Mrs. Dumont with many self-absorbed twits who want to claim the title “parent.”

Here are two very disturbing articles about parents who have become so obsessed with technology that they forget that they have responsibilities for parenting their real, not virtual children. In the first story published by the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Mark Tran reports about two parents who really and truly lost it. In Girl Starved to Death While Parents Raised Virtual Child in Online Game Tran reports:      

South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl.

The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.

“I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven,” the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.

According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.

The UK’s Telegraph reports these idiots were convicted in the article, ‘Internet Addict’ South Korean Couple Convicted of Abandoning Daughter for Virtual Child The fact these clowns got only two years and the woman’s sentence was suspended because she is pregnant is a real travesty.    

Sometimes the abandonment is not as physically graphic as in the Korean case. Emotional abandonment is just as harmful to the child as physically starving them. Julie Sceflo reports about a brain dead mom in the New York Times article, The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In 

WHILE waiting for an elevator at the Fair Oaks Mall near her home in Virginia recently, Janice Im, who works in early-childhood development, witnessed a troubling incident between a young boy and his mother.

The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”

Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”

Much of the concern about cellphones and instant messaging and Twitter has been focused on how children who incessantly use the technology are affected by it. But parents’ use of such technology — and its effect on their offspring — is now becoming an equal source of concern to some child-development researchers.

Sherry Turkle, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiative on Technology and Self, has been studying how parental use of technology affects children and young adults. After five years and 300 interviews, she has found that feelings of hurt, jealousy and competition are widespread. Her findings will be published in “Alone Together” early next year by Basic Books.

In her studies, Dr. Turkle said, “Over and over, kids raised the same three examples of feeling hurt and not wanting to show it when their mom or dad would be on their devices instead of paying attention to them: at meals, during pickup after either school or an extracurricular activity, and during sports events.”

Related

Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price (June 7, 2010)

An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness (June 7, 2010)

Your Brain on Computers: More Americans Sense a Downside to an Always Plugged-In Existence (June 7, 2010)

Sceflo’s article cites Meaningful Experiences in the Every Day Life of Young American Children by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley.

Major Findings

Children from all three groups of families started to speak around the same time and developed good structure and use of language.

Children in professional families heard more words per hour, associated with larger cumulative vocabularies.

In professional families, children heard an average of 2,153 words per hour, while children in working class families heard an average of 1,251 words per hour and children in welfare families heard an average of 616 words per hour. Extrapolated out, this means that in a year children in professional families heard an average of 11 million words, while children in working class families heard an average of 6 million words and children in welfare families heard an average of 3 million words. By kindergarten, a child from a welfare family could have heard 32 million words fewer than a classmate from a professional family.

By age three, the observed cumulative vocabulary for children in the professional families was about 1,100 words. For children from working class families, the observed cumulative vocabulary was about 750 words and for children from welfare families it was just above 500 words.

Children in professional families heard a higher ratio of encouragements to discouragements than their working class and welfare counterparts.

Policy Implications

Based on their research, the authors reached the following key conclusions:

“The most important aspect of children’s language experience is its amount.”

“The most important aspect to evaluate in child care settings for very young children is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their caregivers.” For more information: http://www.psych-ed.org/Topics/Hart_and_Risley.htm, http://www.pbrookes.com/media/pr/100802.htm

Affluent children had an advantage in language skills because of the time their parents spent reading, talking, and interacting with them. Sceflo discusses the implications of technology use by the more affluent and asks the question whether the advantage the children of affluent and educated parents is being eroded by an attention deficit caused by the parent’s obsession with technology?

Are you forcing your child to bite your leg to get your attention?

Where information leads to Hope. ©               Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                      http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                             http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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Embracing parents as education leaders

28 Nov

Moi wrote about the importance of parental involvement in Missouri program: Parent home visits:

One of the mantras of this blog is that education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and the school. All parts of the partnership must be involved.  Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well. A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Class Matters

Teachers and administrators as well as many politicians if they are honest know that children arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Teachers have to teach children at whatever point on the continuum the children are. Jay Matthews reports in the Washington Post article, Try parent visits, not parent takeovers of schools. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/try-parent-visits-not-parent-takeovers-of-schools/2012/05/30/gJQAlDDz2U_story.html

The key ingredient is parental involvement. The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (Council) has a great policy brief on parental involvement.http://www.wccf.org/pdf/parentsaspartners_ece-series.pd

https://drwilda.com/2012/05/30/missouri-program-parent-home-visits/

Julia Lawrence of Education News reports in the article, Kentucky Venture Aims to Train Parents to Become Ed Leaders:

When the Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership opens its doors in Kentucky, it will do so with the goal of getting parents more involved in their children’s academic lives. The Institute’s mission will be to empower parents to take a more active role in determining the future direction of their local education system, which includes greater participation in parent-teacher groups, local school boards and school councils.

Kentucky residents who wish to get involved will have an opportunity to enroll in a 24-month mentoring program offered by the Institute, which will introduce them to the ins and outs of the state’s academic system. Institute leaders say that parents will graduate from the course having learned “the business of education,” leaving them more able to understand the problems confronting state schools today.

Their attempts at involvement will no longer be thwarted by unfamiliar jargon and impenetrable quantitative reports. The goal at graduation will be to have parents not only fully cognizant of the current issues facing K-12 education in the state but also ready to provide solutions for those issues as well….

The CIPL will be building on top of the work done by the existing Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, which has been working for more than 15 years on ways to keep parents in the loop on education. Over 1,600 Kentucky parents have gone through the programs offered by the CIPL, with many going on to take leadership positions in their schools, districts and even at state level. According to KYForward.com, CIPL boasts recruiting two people who have served on the Kentucky Board of Education.

Furthermore, as CIPL expanded its reach, it created a self-perpetuating network among the state’s parents. Those who go through CIPL later go on to recruit and mentor up to 20 other parents each – all in service of giving parents a greater voice in their children’s education…..

In the end, the aim of the Institute is to convince parents that with the right preparation they can have a real, positive impact on student achievement statewide.  http://www.educationnews.org/parenting/kys-new-venture-aims-to-train-parents-to-become-ed-leaders/

Here is the press release:

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Leadership institute encourages parents to get more involved to boost student success

An new initiative to engage and educate parents to be strong and effective leaders in Kentucky schools was recently announced. The Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership (GCIPL) will be an independent nonprofit organization, building on the 16-year record of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, developed by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

The Institute’s mission is preparing parents to take leadership roles in parent-teacher organizations, school councils and committees, local school boards and in other roles that can positively influence student achievement.

“We know how important it is to invest in education for the future of Kentucky, and we can’t overlook parents as a critical resource,” said Gov. Steve Beshear said. “Engaging families in improving schools has benefits that extend far beyond the students whose parents participate in the training. We have parents in our communities who want to help our schools and our students achieve excellence. The Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership will help them do that.”

The Insitute teaches and mentors parents over a 24-month period to understand what Institute leaders call “the business of education” – such as how to read aggregated test scores to understand trends, then recommend steps to help struggling students based on that data. The Institute unlocks educational jargon and technical language so that teachers, administrators and parents can speak with a common understanding of tools and goals.

Parents will also learn to understand how a school’s budget works and how to maximize resources. The goal is to train parents specifically in partnering with educators and administrators to enhance student achievement. Institute administrators estimate that every CIPL graduate mentors another 20 parents, which exponentially enhances the program’s impact on Kentucky students.

The existing Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership (CIPL), which has garnered national attention and served as a model for other states, has engaged about 1,600 Kentucky parents, teaching them how to have a positive impact on student achievement.

Many have gone on to serve in key leadership positions: At least 750 have served on local site-based councils, 47 have served on local school boards and two have served on the state Board of Education.

“Begun in 1997, the impact of CIPL fellows, parent leaders with information, skills, and data that prepares them to partner with schools to improve student achievement, is being felt across the state,” said Bev Raimondo, director of the Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership. “We are excited that Gov. Beshear sees this and is supporting it by making CIPL the Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership.”

“In this era of high quality reform taking place in our nation, it is more important now than ever to have parent leaders deeply involved with our schools,” said Stu Silberman, executive director, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence. “The Governor’s Institute will be a gold standard for this leadership training for our parents. Once again, Kentucky steps up and takes the lead.”

In its most recent sessions, the Institute this past year held three regional classes for parents – in Hazard, Florence and Henderson. Those parents then share their knowledge with others, as peers and mentors.

“My participation in the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership has refined me as a person, a parent and a citizen. I am so proud of the achievements, the successes and the advocacy opportunities I’ve been given because of confidence gained while educating myself and others,” said Teresa Dawes, a parent and 2001 participant in the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership. “Being an advocate for change is true empowerment. GCIPL’s support will reinforce the mission of the Prichard Committee by providing a public voice advocating for continually improved education for all Kentuckians. CIPL fellows past, present and future welcome the collaboration with open arms.”

The new program extends the reach of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, taking the program statewide and formally recognizing its efforts. The program will remain a private, independent, nonprofit corporation funded by donations.

While it is not a state agency, the new name demonstrates the Governor’s commitment to the program. Since there is no state funding available, the program is seeking private support from individuals, corporations and foundations.

Additionally, University of Pikeville President Paul Patton and Morehead State University President Wayne Andrews announced a collaboration that will conduct the first Governor’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership session, to be held in Eastern Kentucky next fall.

The new program’s goal is to fund and schedule at least two more institutes in 2013, and eventually offer five to six per year throughout Kentucky. Each program is three sets of two-day sessions, with follow-up coaching.

For more information or to get involved in the Institute for Parent Leadership, visit kygovcipl.org.

It is going to take coordination between not only education institutions, but a strong social support system to get many of children through school. This does not mean a large program directed from Washington. But, more resources at the local school level which allow discretion with accountability. For example, if I child is not coming to school because they have no shoes or winter coat, then the child gets new shoes and/or a coat. School breakfast and lunch programs must be supported and if necessary, expanded. Unfortunately, schools are now the early warning system for many families in crisis.

Related:

Tips for parent and teacher conferences                          https://drwilda.com/2012/11/07/tips-for-parent-and-teacher-conferences/

Common Sense Media report: Media choices at home affect school performance                                                              https://drwilda.com/2012/11/01/common-sense-media-report-media-choices-at-home-affect-school-performance/

Parents can use tax deductions to pay for special education needs                                                                           https://drwilda.com/2012/10/24/parents-can-use-tax-deductions-to-pay-for-special-education-needs/

Intervening in the lives of truant children by jailing parents https://drwilda.com/2012/10/07/intervening-in-the-lives-of-truant-children-by-jailing-parents/

Making time for family dinner                                                     https://drwilda.com/2012/09/10/making-time-for-family-dinner/

Where information leads to Hope.Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                 http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                    http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                         https://drwilda.com/

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Study: Teens who are ‘sexting’ more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior

17 Sep

Moi wrote in What parents need to know about ‘texting’:                                     Parents must talk to their children about the appropriate use of technology.                                                                                              Jessica Citizen (Tecca) has a very parent-friendly Time article, 92 Teen Text Terms Decoded for Confused Parents:

These days, teens are texting more than ever, but the advent of QWERTY smartphone keyboards, predictive text, autocorrect, and the removal of message character limits should allow young social butterflies the opportunity to type full, real words. However, the confusing shorthand continues to live on anyway. With the help of Twitter, the microblogging site that still limits each post to a mere 140 characters, abbreviated slang appears to be here to stay. http://techland.time.com/2012/05/03/92-teen-text-terms-decoded-for-confused-parents/#ixzz1tvyDjnEp

Citizen includes a list of the most popular terms in her article.

For those who are unable or unwilling to set and observe personal boundaries, Apple just may bail you out. Alexia Tsotsis is reporting at Tech Crunch, Apple Patents Anti-Sexting Device So, for the stupid and truly clueless, looks like Apple is about to come to your rescue. Common Sense Media has some great resources for parents about teaching children how to use media responsibly. Their information about Talking About “Sexting” is excellent.

We live in a society with few personal controls and even fewer people recognize boundaries which should govern their behavior and how they treat others. Aretha Franklin had it right when girlfriend belted out, “Respect.”

In my day, we didn’t have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

~Jane Haddam

https://drwilda.com/2012/05/04/what-parents-need-to-know-about-texting/

Laura Mc Mullen writes in the Health Buzz article, Sexting Teens More Likely to Have Risky Sex:

Study: One in Seven Los Angeles Teens Has Sexted

Sexting is once again linked to risky sexual behavior among teens in a study released today in the journal Pediatrics. One out of every seven Los Angeles teenagers surveyed for the study has sent a sexually-explicit text or photo, the study revealed, and those “sexters” are more likely to be engaging in unsafe sex, as in unprotected or under the influence. “What we really wanted to know is, is there a link between sexting and taking risks with your body? And the answer is a pretty resounding ‘yes,'” Eric Rice, sudy author and assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work, told Reuters. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/09/17/health-buzz-sexting-teens-more-likely-to-have-risky-sex

Citation:

Sexually Explicit Cell Phone Messaging Associated With Sexual Risk Among Adolescents

  1. Eric Rice, PhDa,
  2. Harmony Rhoades, PhDa,
  3. Hailey Winetrobe, MPHa,
  4. Monica Sanchez, MAb,
  5. Jorge Montoya, PhDc,
  6. Aaron Plant, MPHc, and
  7. Timothy Kordic, MAd

+ Author Affiliations

  1. aSchool of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California;
  2. bDepartment of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts;
  3. cSentient Research, Los Angeles, California; and
  4. dLos Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, California
    Abstract
    OBJECTIVES: Sexting (sending/receiving sexually explicit texts and images via cell phone) may be associated with sexual health consequences among adolescents. However, to date, no published data from a probability-based sample has examined associations between sexting and sexual activity.
    METHODS: A probability sample of 1839 students was collected alongside the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey in Los Angeles high schools. Logistic regressions were used to assess the correlates of sexting behavior and associations between sexting and sexual risk-taking.
    RESULTS: Fifteen percent of adolescents with cell phone access reported sexting, and 54% reported knowing someone who had sent a sext. Adolescents whose peers sexted were more likely to sext themselves (odds ratio [OR] = 16.87, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 9.62–29.59). Adolescents who themselves sexted were more likely to report being sexually active (OR = 7.17, 95% CI: 5.01–10.25). Nonheterosexual students were more likely to report sexting (OR = 2.74, 95% CI: 1.86–4.04), sexual activity (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.07–2.15), and unprotected sex at last sexual encounter (OR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.17–2.89).
    CONCLUSIONS: Sexting, rather than functioning as an alternative to “real world” sexual risk behavior, appears to be part of a cluster of risky sexual behaviors among adolescents. We recommend that clinicians discuss sexting as an adolescent-friendly way of engaging patients in conversations about sexual activity, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, and unwanted pregnancy. We further recommend that discussion about sexting and its associated risk behavior be included in school-based sexual health curricula.

Key Words:

Abbreviations:

CI —
confidence interval
LAUSD —
Los Angeles Unified School District
LGBTQ —
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning/unsure
OR —
odds ratio
STIs —
sexually transmitted infections
YRBS —
Youth Risk Behavior Survey
  • Accepted May 21, 2012.
  • Copyright © 2012 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/09/12/peds.2012-0021.abstract

Moi wrote in Talking to your teen about risky behaviors:

Many parents want tips about how to talk with their kids about risky behaviors and whether they should spy on their children.

Perhaps the best advice comes from Carleton Kendrick in the Family Education article, Spying on Kids

Staying connected

So how do you make sure your teens are on the straight and narrow? You can’t. And don’t think you can forbid them to experiment with risky behavior. That’s what they’re good at during this stage, along with testing your limits. You can help them stay healthy, safe, and secure by doing the following:

  • Keep communicating with your teens, even if they don’t seem to be listening. Talk about topics that interest them.

  • Respect and ask their opinions.

  • Give them privacy. That doesn’t mean you can’t knock on their door when you want to talk.

  • Set limits on their behavior based on your values and principles. They will grudgingly respect you for this.

  • Continually tell them and show them you believe in who they are rather than what they accomplish.

  • Seek professional help if your teen’s abnormal behaviors last more than three weeks.

A 1997 landmark adolescent health study, which interviewed over 12,000 teenagers, concluded that the single greatest protection against high-risk teenage behavior, like substance abuse and suicide, is a strong emotional connection to a parent. Tough as it may be, you should always try to connect with them. And leave the spying to James Bond. It will only drive away the children you wish to bring closer.

In truth, a close relationship with your child will probably be more effective than spying. Put down that Blackberry, iPhone, and Droid and try connecting with your child. You should not only know who your children’s friends are, but you should know the parents of your children’s friends. Many parents have the house where all the kids hang out because they want to know what is going on with their kids. Often parents volunteer to chauffeur kids because that gives them the opportunity to listen to what kids are talking about. It is important to know the values of the families of your kid’s friends. Do they furnish liquor to underage kids, for example?  How do they feel about teen sex and is their house the place where kids meet for sex?Lisa Frederiksen has written the excellent article, 10 Tips for Talking to Teens About Sex, Drugs & Alcohol  which was posted at the Partnership for A Drug-Free America

So, in answer to the question should you spy on your Kids? Depends on the child. Some children are more susceptible to peer pressure and impulsive behavior than others. They will require more and possibly more intrusive direction. Others really are free range children and have the resources and judgment to make good decisions in a variety of circumstances. Even within a family there will be different needs and abilities. The difficulty for parents is to make the appropriate judgments and still give each child the feeling that they have been treated fairly. Still, for some kids, it is not out of line for parents to be snoops, they just might save the child and themselves a lot of heartache. https://drwilda.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

Resources:

Sexting Information: What every parent should know about sexting.                                                                                                                                     http://www.noslang.com/sexting.php

Social Networking and Internet Safety Information for Parents: Sexting                                                                                                                                     http://internet-safety.yoursphere.com/sexting/

Teen Sexting Tips                                                                                 http://www.safeteens.com/teen-sexting-tips/

Related:

New study about ‘sexting’ and teens                        https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/new-study-about-sexting-and-teens/

Sexting’ during school hours                                                           https://drwilda.com/2012/08/05/sexting-during-school-hours/

CDC report: Contraceptive use among teens                             https://drwilda.com/2012/07/24/cdc-report-contraceptive-use-among-teens/

Title IX also mandates access to education for pregnant students                                                                     https://drwilda.com/2012/06/19/title-ix-also-mandates-access-to-education-for-pregnant-students/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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CDC report: Contraceptive use among teens

24 Jul

In No one is perfect: People sometimes fail, moi said:

There are no perfect people, no one has a perfect life and everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, children do not come with instruction manuals, which give specific instructions about how to relate to that particular child. Further, for many situations there is no one and only way to resolve a problem. What people can do is learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others. Craig Playstead has assembled a top ten list of mistakes made by parents and they should be used as a starting point in thinking about your parenting style and your family’s dynamic. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/no-one-is-perfect-people-sometimes-fail/ Still, parents must talk to their children about life risks.  https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC)has published a study about the sexual activity of children.

Here is the press release for the CDC report, Sexual Experience and Contraceptive Use Among Female Teens — United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010:

Sexual Experience and Contraceptive Use Among Female Teens — United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010

Weekly

May 4, 2012 / 61(17);297-301

The 2010 U.S. teen birth rate of 34.3 births per 1,000 females reflected a 44% decline from 1990 (1). Despite this trend, U.S. teen birth rates remain higher than rates in other developed countries; approximately 368,000 births occurred among teens aged 15–19 years in 2010, and marked racial/ethnic disparities persist (1,2). To describe trends in sexual experience and use of contraceptive methods among females aged 15–19 years, CDC analyzed data from the National Survey of Family Growth collected for 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010 (3). During 2006–2010, 57% of females aged 15–19 years had never had sex (defined as vaginal intercourse), an increase from 49% in 1995. Younger teens (aged 15–17 years) were more likely not to have had sex (73%) than older teens (36%); the proportion of teens who had never had sex did not differ by race/ethnicity. Approximately 60% of sexually experienced teens reported current use of highly effective contraceptive methods (e.g., intrauterine device [IUD] or hormonal methods), an increase from 47% in 1995. However, use of highly effective methods varied by race/ethnicity, with higher rates observed for non-Hispanic whites (66%) than non-Hispanic black (46%) and Hispanic teens (54%). Addressing the complex issue of teen childbearing requires a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health that includes continued promotion of delayed sexual debut and increased use of highly effective contraception among sexually experienced teens.

Nationally representative data on females aged 15–19 years were obtained from three survey cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG): 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010. NSFG is an in-person, household survey conducted by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics using a stratified, multistage probability sample of females and males aged 15–44 years. The response rate for females was 76%. Survey topics included self-reported sexual activity and contraceptive use (4). Respondents who answered “yes” to ever having vaginal intercourse were considered sexually experienced.

Respondents who were pregnant, postpartum, seeking pregnancy, or who had not had sex during the interview month were excluded from analyses on contraceptives used during the interview month. The remaining respondents were classified as currently using contraception (specifying up to four methods) or not currently using contraception. Current contraceptive users were classified further by their most effective method used (according to typical use effectiveness estimates for pregnancy prevention) (3), based on the following hierarchy: 1) users of highly effective methods, including respondents who used long-acting reversible contraception (i.e., intrauterine device [IUD] or implant), pill, patch, ring, or injectable contraception (with or without dual use of condoms), or who were sterilized or had a partner who was sterilized (both were rare for teens); 2) users of moderately effective methods, including respondents who used condoms alone; and 3) users of less effective methods, including respondents who used withdrawal, periodic abstinence, rhythm method, emergency contraception, diaphragm, female condom, foam, jelly, cervical cap, sponge, suppository, or insert.

Weighted least squares regression was used to assess the significance of trends in abstinence and contraceptive use over time. Differences in bivariate proportions between racial/ethnic and age subgroups were assessed using a standard two-tailed t-test without adjustment for multiple comparisons. Comparisons are statistically significant at p<0.05. All analyses were conducted using data management and statistical software to account for the complex sample design of the NSFG.

During 2006–2010, more than half (56.7%) of female teens had never had sex (Table), reflecting a 16% increase relative to the 1995 estimate of 48.9%. The proportion of teens who had never had sex did not differ significantly across racial/ethnic groups* (whites = 57.6%, blacks = 53.6%, Hispanics = 56.2%) (Table). Although the proportion of teens who had never had sex increased for all racial/ethnic groups from 1995 to 2006–2010, this increase was greatest for blacks (34% increase) and Hispanics (29% increase) compared with whites (15% increase). During 2006–2010, 72.9% of females aged 15–17 years had never had sex, compared with 36.5% of females aged 18–19 years.

During 2006–2010, among female teens who had sex during the interview month, but who were not pregnant, postpartum, or seeking pregnancy, 59.8% used a highly effective contraceptive method during the interview month (12.0% used a highly effective method with a condom and 47.8% used a highly effective method without a condom), 16.3% used a moderately effective method (i.e., condoms alone), 6.1% used a less effective method, and 17.9% did not use any contraception (Figure). A trend toward increasing use of highly effective methods was noted from 1995 to 2006–2010. Estimates for 2006–2010 reflect a relative 26% increase in use of highly effective methods, 43% decrease for moderately effective methods, 27% increase for less effective methods, and 7% decrease for no method use compared with 1995.

During 2006–2010, white teens (65.7%) reported a higher prevalence of highly effective method use than black teens (46.5%) and Hispanic teens (53.7%) (Figure). Nonuse of any contraceptive method was significantly higher among blacks (25.6%) and Hispanics (23.7%) compared with whites (14.6%). Among whites, the use of highly effective methods increased from 48.9% in 1995 to 65.7% in 2006–2010 (34% relative increase). Smaller increases were observed for Hispanics (19% relative increase) and blacks (4% relative increase). Method nonuse among whites decreased from 18.1% in 1995 to 14.6% in 2006–2010 (19% decline); however, rates increased among blacks from 21.4% in 1995 to 25.6% in 2006–2010 (20% increase). For females aged 15–17 years, the use of highly effective methods increased from 46.0% during 1995 to 56.5% during 2006–2010 (23% increase). For females aged 18–19 years, the use of highly effective methods increased from 48.4% during 1995 to 61.8% during 2006–2010 (28% increase). Rates of nonuse among younger teens declined from 23.9% to 19.5% (19% decline) but remained relatively stable for older teens at 16.3% in 1995 and 16.9% during 2006–2010.

Reported by

Crystal Pirtle Tyler, PhD, Lee Warner, PhD, Joan Marie Kraft, PhD, Alison Spitz, MPH, Lorrie Gavin, PhD, Violanda Grigorescu, MD, Carla White, MPH, Wanda Barfield, MD, Div of Reproductive Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC. Corresponding contributor:Crystal Pirtle Tyler, ctyler@cdc.gov, 770-488-5200.

Editorial Note

In 2010, the U.S. teen birth rate declined to the lowest level in seven decades of reporting and reached record lows for teens of all racial/ethnic and age groups (1). Declines since 1995 likely reflect significant increases in the proportion of female teens who were abstinent, and among sexually experienced female teens, increases in the proportion using highly effective contraception (5).

The proportion of female teens who never have had sex is now comparable across racial/ethnic groups, largely because of proportionately larger increases in delayed sexual debut observed since 1995 among black teens and Hispanic teens compared with white teens. Disparities persist, however, in the use of highly effective methods of contraception. Use of these methods remains highest among white teens, and increases over time have occurred at a greater rate among whites compared with blacks and Hispanics.

Achieving the HealthyPeople 2020 objective† of reducing teen pregnancy by 10% will require a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health that includes continued promotion of delayed sexual debut and increased use of highly effective contraception among sexually experienced teens. Condoms, the method used by many teens, can provide effective protection against unintended pregnancy when used consistently and correctly; however, during 2006–2010, only about half (49%) of female teens who used a condom for contraception reported consistent use in the past month (6). Dual use of condoms with a highly effective method of contraception can provide pregnancy protection with the added benefit of preventing sexually transmitted infections, including infection with human immunodeficiency virus, which affects teens disproportionately. Given that hormonal contraception and IUDs can be obtained only from a health-care provider, yearly reproductive health visits for teens who are sexually experienced or contemplating sexual activity can facilitate discussions about the advantages of delaying sexual debut, access to contraception, and the subsequent reduction of teen pregnancy (7,8).

An analysis of data from CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on female teens who had delivered a live infant within 2–6 months and reported that their pregnancy was unintended found that half were not using contraception when they got pregnant (9). Ways to reduce barriers to decrease teen pregnancy include encouraging teens to delay sexual debut, offering teens convenient practice hours, culturally competent and confidential counseling and services, and low-cost or free services and methods.

The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, estimates of contraceptive use are self-reported; however, NSFG was designed specifically to minimize potential sources of response error (4). Second, current use of a contraceptive method during the interview month does not necessarily reflect sustained use over time. Finally, data were not available to examine current sexual activity or contraceptive use among female teens aged <15 years, who accounted for 4,500 births in 2010 (1).

Several actions can be taken to reduce teen pregnancy further. Schools and community- based organizations can 1) provide evidence-based sexual and reproductive health education,§ 2) support parents’ efforts to speak with their children about advantages of delaying sexual debut and of delaying pregnancy, and 3) connect teens to health-care providers for reproductive health services. Health-care providers should be informed that no contraceptive method is contraindicated for teens solely on the basis of age (10) and encouraged to promote highly effective contraception, preferably with the dual use of condoms. Teen pregnancy might be reduced further if health-care professionals provide culturally competent, evidence-based sexual and reproductive health counseling on the importance of correct and consistent use of contraception, and offer an array of contraceptive methods to teens who have had sex or are about to initiate sexual activity.

Acknowledgments

Gladys M. Martinez, PhD, Stephanie J. Ventura, MA, Joyce C. Abma, PhD, Div of Vital Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics; John M. Douglas, Jr, MD, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, CDC.

References

  1. Hamilton BE, Martin JA, Ventura SJ. Births: preliminary data for 2010. Natl Vital Stat Rep 2011;60(2).
  2. United Nations. Demographic yearbook 2009. New York, NY: United Nations; 2010. Available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2.htmExternal Web Site Icon. Accessed February 28, 2012.
  3. Trussell J. Contraceptive failure in the United States. Contraception 2011;83:397–404.
  4. Groves RM, Mosher WD, Lepkowski J, Kirgis NG. Planning and development of he continuous National Survey of Family Growth. Vital Health Stat 2009;1(48).
  5. Santelli JS, Lindberg LD, Finer LB, Singh S. Explaining recent declines in adolescent pregnancy in the United States: the contribution of abstinence and improved contraceptive use. Am J Public Health 2007;97:150–6.
  6. Martinez G, Copen CE, Abma JC. Teenagers in the United States: sexual activity, contraceptive use, and childbearing, 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth. Vital Health Stat 2011;23(31).
  7. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Committee on Adolescent Health. The initial reproductive health visit. Committee opinion no. 460. Obstet Gynecol 2010;116:240–3.
  8. Hagan JF, Shaw JS, Duncan PM. Bright futures: guidelines for health supervision of infants, children and adolescents. 3rd ed. Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics; 2008.
  9. CDC. Prepregnancy contraceptive use among teens with unintended pregnancies resulting in live births—Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), 2004–2008. MMWR 2012;61:25–9.
  10. CDC. U.S. medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use, 2010. MMWR 2010;59(No. RR-4).

* Persons identified as Hispanic might be of any race; persons in all other racial/ethnic categories are non-Hispanic.

† Objective FP-8, available at http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/pdfs/familyplanning.pdf Adobe PDF fileExternal Web Site Icon.

§ The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends comprehensive risk reduction interventions. Additional information is available at http://www.thecommunityguide.org/news/2012/crrandaeinterventions.htmlExternal Web Site Icon

For a good summary of the report, More teens using condoms over past two decades http://www.wtop.com/267/2955744/US-targets-AIDS-stigma

In Talking to kids about sex, early and often, moi said: 

The blog discussed the impact of careless, uninformed, and/or reckless sex in the post, A baby changes everything: Helping parents finish school http://us.mg5.mail.yahoo.com/2011/12/26/a-baby-changes-everything-helping-parents-finish-school/ Let’s continue the discussion. Some folks may be great friends, homies, girlfriends, and dudes, but they make lousy parents. Could be they are at a point in their life where they are too selfish to think of anyone other than themselves, they could be busy with school, work, or whatever. No matter the reason, they are not ready and should not be parents. Birth control methods are not 100% effective, but the available options are 100% ineffective in people who are sexually active and not using birth control. So, if you are sexually active and you have not paid a visit to Planned Parenthood or some other agency, then you are not only irresponsible, you are Eeeevil. Why do I say that? You are playing “Russian Roulette” with the life of another human being, the child. You should not ever put yourself in the position of bringing a child into the world that you are unprepared to parent, emotionally, financially, and with a commitment of time. So, if you find yourself in a what do I do moment and are pregnant, you should consider adoption. Before reaching that fork in the road of what to do about an unplanned pregnancy, parents must talk to their children about sex and they must explain their values to their children. They must explain why they have those values as well.  https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/talking-to-kids-about-sex-early-and-often/

Related:

Study: Girls as young as six think of themselves as sex objects        https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/study-girls-as-young-as-six-think-of-themselves-as-sex-objects/

Study: Low-income populations and marriage https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/study-low-income-populations-and-marriage/

Title IX also mandates access to education for pregnant students https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/title-ix-also-mandates-access-to-education-for-pregnant-students/

Teaching kids that babies are not delivered by UPS                       https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/teaching-kids-that-babies-are-not-delivered-by-ups/

Talking to your teen about risky behaviors                https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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