How to More Effectively Prevent Child Sexual Abuse

Every day, children in the United States experience sexual abuse. It’s difficult to determine how widespread this problem is because child sexual abuse is not uniformly defined and most certainly under-reported. The best data available tells us that more than 25 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys experience sexual abuse at some point during their formative years. [Read more…]

The Evidence on Kids, Sleep, and School Start Times

It’s nearly time for kids across the country to head back to school and that means—for most kids—waking up bright and early. While early mornings are not often problematic for younger kids, tweens and teens often struggle to get up in the morning. [Read more…]

How To Treat the Growing Problem of Childhood Anxiety

Whether it’s feeling nervous to attend a new school, afraid of a scary looking bug, or scared of the dark, most children experience some form of anxiety. But up to one in three children experience more severe anxiety that affects their ability to learn and socialize. [Read more…]

What Happens When We Separate Families

Over the past several months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – has been separating parents and their children seeking asylum at the U.S. border. In the vast majority of cases, these children have been taken to care institutions while their parents are detained in jail. [Read more…]

Why Do Youth Self-Injure?

Self-injury is defined as harming oneself on purpose, but without the intention of committing suicide. Research finds that about 17 percent of adolescents harm themselves intentionally. Girls are more likely to begin injuring themselves at a younger age, and use more serious forms of self-injury. Boys are more likely to injure themselves when they are high or drunk, or when they are in a social setting. [Read more…]

When Parents Read to Kids, Everyone Wins

It’s no surprise that when parents read to their kids, it helps them succeed in school. [Read more…]

What’s the Best Way to Treat Mental Health Problems in Kids?

No one knows for sure, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 13 and 20 percent of youth ages 3 to 17 experience a mental health problem each year. This includes diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorders and Tourette syndrome. [Read more…]

What To Do About Cyberbullying

Today’s teenagers are growing up with a completely different set of social parameters compared to any other generation before them thanks to advances in technology. [Read more…]

When Grandparents Raise Their Grandchildren

More children are living with their grandparents than ever before in contemporary society. This phenomenon leads to a complex set of issues and outcomes for grandparents and the children for whom they care. [Read more…]

The Summer Slump: Do Kids Backslide During Summer Vacation?

Kids across the nation are well into summer days of swimming, day camps and – in many cases – extra time in front of TVs. For most children, this also means less time engaged in educational pursuits like reading, math and problem solving. [Read more…]

Playing To Win: Should Youth Specialize in Sports?

If you spend any time at a baseball field during this season, you’ll pick up on all sorts of philosophies about kids and sports.

There are the laid back parents who don’t mind that their kid is picking dandelions in the outfield. There are the intense parents who are watching their kids’ every move and critiquing their play. There are coaches working to instill the values of hard work and sportsmanship, and those who are out there simply to win. [Read more…]

What’s the Best Way to Help Low-Income Mothers?

Robyn Wishna / Cornell Marketing Group

For 40 years, an intervention program called the Nurse-Family Partnership has been sending public health nurses to visit first-time, low-income mothers to encourage healthy behaviors and offer advice on child development. [Read more…]

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