I was looking over my 13 year old son’s shoulder the other day (or, as they say in teen cyberlanguage “POS” for Parent Over Shoulder) and watched his fingers quickly slip toward the enter button on the keyboard. His post, a peacemaking comment about a battle between two of his friends, appeared on the screen among a list of other negative messages about the conflict. Others had gotten much nastier about the problem, degrading into name-calling and accusations that had nothing to do with the situation. Does anybody ever win these ”nuclear wars on the two inch screen” that happen on teen facebook pages and cell phones across the country? How do our kids cope with the stress of a battle where each person needs to get in the last insult?
According to ISafe, an organization that encourages electronic safety among kids and teens, the majority of young people online have been unkind or had unkind things said to them, ranging from general meanness to actual threats. Why are teens especially at risk for electronic warfare? Three factors contribute to the problem:
Hormones and impulses – hormones can be “emotion intensifiers,” for teens, turning up the volume on excitement, sadness, and, in this case, anger and frustration. Couple these with the impulsivity that is also part of the teen brain, and any perspective they may have had on the size of an argument with a friend online or in texts is lost.
The ”Invisible Audience” - Ever have the feeling someone is watching? Teens feel this all the time as part of their identity development. Holding up this self-critical mirror on all of their movements, statements, and clothing causes them to lose balance and perspective that might reduce the risk of electronic hostility.
The “hit and run” factor in electronic communication - computers and cell phones give us the mistaken feeling that we are communicating with a curtain of invsibility. From birth our brains are developmentally programmed to read and respond to the reactions on other peoples’ faces. Taking away that important feedback loop in communication makes it falsely seem like there are no consequences to what we say or post.
With all three of those issues at work on our teens at once, an overly negative or even downright mean post or text is bound to happen. Making those instances less likely is going to take more than taking away electronic privileges after the fact.
Instead of using the old consequence and punishment system, try changing the cyberculture in your household. Start by making your computer a “verbal violence” free zone. Talk to your teen about making a mindful choice in what kind of person they want to be in the electronic world, and how to avoid the “she or he said it first” mentality that starts online fights.
Want to really turn up the heat? Try placing a small mirror facing the computer chair with a small note attached asking, “Is this what I would really say in person?”
Cybersafety organizations like NetSmartz.org have programs and information for teens and parents that can help start the conversation and get past the “I know”-itis that teens say when we try to help. http://www.Amazon.com also carries helpful books and videos such as Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn To Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly by Nancy Willard.
Spring is just around the corner and patients with allergies should start to thinking about signs of allergies and strategies to avoid symptoms. As the weather warms up, trees and flowers will start to bloom that can trigger allergy and asthma symptoms. In addition there are year round allergy triggers that can cause chronic respiratory symptoms. Allergy symptoms can vary from itchy rashes to full-blown asthma attacks so awareness of early warning signs can help you treat them.
Allergy symptoms can sometimes mimic viral infections like common colds. Symptoms include clear runny nose, itchy, red eyes, coughing, and rashes. Non-prescription medications that treat allergy symptoms include antihistamines, decongestants and topical steroid creams. If untreated, allergies can progress to more serious infections such as ear infections, sinusitis, or conjunctivitis. Your health professional can help you differentiate between allergy symptoms and viral illnesses. He can recommend the most appropriate medication regimen for you. There is also blood and skin tests that can help identify specific allergies.
Allergy Symptoms:
Runny nose
Itchy or red eyes
Persistent cough
Itchy rashes
The best way to treat allergies is to avoid the offending allergens and to minimize exposure. One of the most common allergies is to dust mites that are concentrated in the bed. We spend about 1/3 of our life in the bedroom and not surprising that is where dust mites concentrate. Dust mites eat the dead skin that flakes off your skin and excrete feces which we inhale while we sleep. Washing the blankets and pillowcases in hot water once a week should minimize dust mites. In addition to frequent washing, encasing pillowcases and mattresses in special dust mite covers prevent allergy exposure. Also dusting with a wet cloth is better than a feather duster. Vacuuming once a week with a HEPA filter bag should keep the bedroom clear of dust. For severe allergies, a portable HEPA air filter purifier can be placed in the bedroom can help remove additional allergens. Indoor Allergen Avoidance:
Wash blankets in hot water weekly
Vacuum weekly with a HEPA filter bag
Dust with a wet cloth
Minimize animal exposure
Eliminate mold sources in the home
HEPA air purifier
Outdoor allergies can be difficult to avoid but one can minimize symptoms by taking a non-sedating antihistamine before going outside. The American Academy of Allergy and Immunology tracks pollen counts in the United States that you can use their webpage to determine when pollen counts are high. After coming into the home, remove your clothing and shower will help remove any pollens that attach to your hair and body. In addition, keep the windows in your house closed to prevent pollen from coming into your home. Pets also bring outdoor allergens into the home so bathing them regularly will decrease the your exposure.
If avoidance and over-the-counter medications do not relieve your symptoms, your physician my run additional tests to make the correct diagnosis. Some tests would include a blood test for allergies. This test identifies the levels of antibodies against allergens that your body has reacted; a high level of these antibodies would indicate an allergy to that particular allergen. Allergists can perform a skin prick test; in this test, the patient’s skin is pricked and a specific allergen is introduced into the skin. The size of reaction to this prick would indicate the presence of an allergy.
Outdoor Allergen Avoidance:
Avoid outdoor activities when pollen count was high
Change clothes and shower after being outdoors
Wash pets regularly
After allergies are identified, there are a number of treatment options. Prescription medications include antihistamines, nasal steroids, leukotriene modifiers, and mast cell modifiers. These medications reduce the production of the inflammatory chemicals that are released during an allergic reaction. For those patients who do not respond adequately to prescription medications, allergy desensitization shots also known as “allergy shots” may be recommended. This procedure involves injecting a very small amount of allergen to your skin and slowly increases the amount of allergen to induce tolerance to that allergen. An alternative controversial method to induce tolerance is Sublingual Immmunotherapy (SLIT). This method involves introducing small amounts of allergens under the tongue to induce tolerance. A recent study indicates that 35% of patients respond favorably and 38% of patients had no response. In addition, for those patients who did respond to SLIT, the response was not as effective as traditional immunotherapy.
Even Shakespeare wrote about it – the contrary nature of teens. Romeo and Juliet were given strict orders to stay away from each other but neither did. And the young couples in Midsummer Night’s Dream running off into the forest? That might have earned those teens a trip to the Nunnery, which was a sort of Elizabethan teen military school. Sound familiar to our time? Actually teen posturing aginst parents has a very important developmental function, and understanding the “hidden language” of adolescent oppositionality can keep our responses on the right track.
Just as there is a spurt in height during the adolescent period, there is a spurt in identity development as well. Identity in teens is a lot like a building on a Hollywood movie set. The exteriors, hair, clothes, and makeup, set the tone while the important work of identity development occurs behind the scenes. Even teen facial expressions, ranging from grimaces to sarcastic glances, keep parents and adults from seeing past the attitude revealing the fact that teens find out who they are not long before they discover who they are. In other words, teens will experiment with dress and behavior in order to “try on” adult identities. For most, this is a temporary fix until transitional challenges like getting a first job or moving away to college become the formative influences on identity. But for others, actually fewer than the media tends to portray, oppositionality becomes an easier path to identity formation. For those teens, either behaving like a psuedo-adult with extreme independence from parenteal limits, or negative identifications with a drug using crowd offer a “quick fix” to the identity formation challenge.
Students who at the age of 16 years excel at school, particularly in creative subjects, are almost 4 times more likely to develop bipolar disorder during the next decade than teenagers with average grades, a new study has found.
This finding supports the hypothesis that creative individuals are more susceptible to bipolar disorder, lead author James H. MacCabe, PhD, Senior Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, United Kingdom, told Medscape Psychiatry. “This is an idea that a lot of people believe, although until this study, there hasn’t been very strong evidence,” said Dr. MacCabe.
However, the investigators also found a relationship, albeit a weaker one, between students who do poorly in school and the later development of bipolar disorder.
The study is published in the February issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Suicidal adolescents who were prescribed an antidepressant medication during inpatient psychiatric hospital treatment were 85 percent less likely than others to be readmitted within a month after discharge, a new study found. This is reassuring data, as there have been concerns about prescribing antidepressants in adolescents since 2003, when the FDA issued a black box warning that some antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal behavior for pediatric patients. A black-box warning is the most serious type of warning in prescription drug labeling.
The study appears in the December issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
The researchers did a retrospective study of 318 Medicaid-covered adolescents who were admitted to three major psychiatric hospitals in Maryland because of attempted suicide or suicidal behaviors.
They examined hospital medical records for the adolescents and recorded all medication changes — including additions, discontinuations and changed dosages that occurred during the hospital stay. The researchers then identified which patients were readmitted to any hospital in Maryland within 30 days of their discharge. The study found that 78 percent of the inpatients had one or more changes in their medication, typically the addition of an antidepressant, mood stabilizer or antipsychotic.
The study also found that adolescents who were prescribed three or more psychotropic medications were 2.6 times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.
Reserachers at Queensland Brain Insitute in Australia have discovered the class of drugs that increase levels of a neurotransmitter known as ‘norepinephrine’ triggers neurogenesis – the growth of new neurons – in a brain region called the hippocampus. If you block hippocampus neurogenesis, antidepressants no longer work,” lead researcher Dr Dhanisha Jhaveri said. “That suggests antidepressants must up-regulate neurogenesis in order for them to actually have any affect on behavior.”
However, the neuroscientists also found not all antidepressants worked in the same way. Dr Jhaveri said surprisingly, the class of antidepressants that increase levels of the neurotransmitter called serotonin – Prozac is a common example – fails to stimulate neurogenesis. “Norepinephrine is basically binding directly onto the precursors which then initiate a signal which leads to the production of more neurons,” she said.
Using rodent models the research, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience , established that selectively blocking the re-uptake of norepinephrine directly activated hippocampal stem cells thereby discovering a much larger pool of dormant precursors in the hippocampus than previously thought to exist.
This research may provide insights into treatment for depression and understanding of its underlying etiology.
Media influence on kids has become the subject of increased focus by parents, educators and health care professional. New research has named several areas of influence in which media content has a negative effect on children. Violence and aggressive behavior, sexual content, body image and self esteem and physical health and school performance were sited as the main areas of concern.
Violence:The incidents of violence shown on the news, in movies and prime time TV has increased and become more graphicin nature. This can lead to desensitization to pain and suffering as well as increase anxiety.
Sexual content:A report was issued in 1996 citing that kids were exposed to at least eight sexual references per hour during “family hour”. The results were found that such exposure can affect adolescents’ moral judgment. These statistics have no doubt increased over the past fourteen years.
Body image:The promotion of unrealistic expectations of what’s considered acceptable physical appearance for both boys and girls can be a catalyst for the rise in eating disorders and decline in self esteem.
Physical health and school performance:The average American child spends more than twenty hours per week watching TV as well as additional time on the internet, playing video games and using a cell phone. This takes time away from homework and exercise contributing to the increase in childhood obesity and poor school performance. Parents are encouraged to have a proactive involvement in their child’s media involvement.The beneficial effects are early preparedness for learning, exposure to social issues, the arts and other healthy entertainment.Remember to take notice and be interested in what your child is doing. Keep communications open and offer alternatives that are within their frame of interest.
Please visit our Kids & Media section for tips on how to make sure how to protect children from media dangers and suggestions for positive media.
It can be tough to get our video game generation kids to get outside and play. A good alternative is Wii Fit Plus or Dance Dance Revolution. A study has shown that certain activity-based videogames can be good subtitutes to get the children to start an active lifestyle. Parents can join in and make it a family event. Anyone care to share their experiences with getting their kids to be more active?
We usually think of learning problems or disabilities as referring to school or academic problems. However, many children who do well in school have learning problems when it comes to getting along with peers, learning various types of sports, learning how to regulate their appetites in order to reach their ideal weight, learning how to regulate their moods in order to enjoy life more, or learning how to get organized and make their lives more manageable and require less parental supervision.
I like to think of any problem as a learning problem. That is, I assume that either there is either insufficient reward, a developmental problem, or some combination of the two when a child is not learning a skill that they need to acquire. Fox example, if a child does not clean their room, it is possible that a parent’s providing a privilege or monetary reward would help them learn to clean their room more often.
If a reward does not work, then it could be a developmental issue. Briefly stated, a developmental perspective assumes that a child cannot learn certain things until their nervous systems and bodies have developed to a point where they are ready to do so. In spite of the best teaching strategies, we probably would not be able to teach even a gifted 7-year-old child to do Algebra. The brain’s abstract thinking processes have not developed enough to support the acquisition of such skills.
In his book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry, M.D., details his work with children who have been severely abused and/or neglected. However, one of the outcomes of his work, the area of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) has implications for all children (see, for example, www.reclaiming.com and ChildTrauma Academy.com). Briefly stated, Perry and his colleagues have devised developmental rating scales that allow them to predict what interventions will work best for the child.
These interventions sometimes include verbal therapy, but they often include more basic means such as music, movement, breathing exercises, and drumming when the child does not appear developmentally ready for verbal techniques.
When I was a child, I was a good athlete. I excelled in baseball, football, basketball, and golf, but I did not learn to swim until I was 26-years-old. I tried very hard, and my parents provided swimming lessons for many years, but my development in this area was far behind my development in other sports, as well as in academic areas.
In brief, then, learning encompasses all areas of life, and some of us learn quickly in some others, and not so quickly in others. A thorough assessment of all of your child’s strengths and weakness should help you provide them with the intervention that is most appropriate for their developmental needs.
Remember my example with swimming, however, and be aware that your labor may not bear fruit immediately!
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