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Child Development

The Foster Care System and Its Victims Part 4

By Dr. Susanne Babbel, Ph.D., MFT on February 22, 2012 in Somatic Psychology

The cost of keeping the foster care system running is staggering... and yet is not nearly enough. Read More

Is It Time to Change Your Parenting Practices?

By Nancy S. Buck, Ph.D. on February 21, 2012 in Peaceful Parenting

If someone once said, "Parenting is the art of getting kids to do what you want them to do and getting them to stop doing things you don't want them to do," then I'm here to disagree. Read More

Getting Kids to Eat Veggies

By Brent McFerran, Ph.D. on February 21, 2012 in I'll Have What She's Having

If we cannot get children to eat healthy now, we are likely staring down the barrel of obesity rates that will continue to rise. Read More

Even for Young Kids, Explanation Guides Exploration

By Art Markman, Ph.D. on February 21, 2012 in Ulterior Motives

It is generally a positive characteristic to be curious. When you are curious, you spend a lot of time trying to understand the way the world around you works. Read More

How a Child Killer Slipped Past the System

By Kathy Seifert, Ph.D. on February 21, 2012 in Stop The Cycle

In the wake of horrific murders, the question still lingers: How did a potentially psychopathic child killer slip past the police, a court judge, and the state’s Department of Health and Social Services? Read More

What the Latest Placebo Research Means for Parents and Kids

By Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. on February 21, 2012 in Suffer the Children

What does the latest research on the placebo effect mean for the one million children in the United States, some as young as six, who are diagnosed with "childhood depression" and taking antidepressant medications? Read More

Do Anti-Depressants Really Work?

By Carolyn C. Ross, M.D., M.P.H. on February 20, 2012 in Real Healing

The television program, 60 Minutes, recently addressed the volume of research on the lack of efficacy of anti-depressant medications. This research began over a decade ago and has shown that anti-depressant medications are not much more effective than placebo (sugar pill). In fact on 60 Minutes, Dr. Read More

Principle Number Five: Love Your Enemy

By Izzy Kalman on February 20, 2012 in A Psychological Solution to Bullying

The purpose of school anti-bullying policies and campaigns is to promote the development of morality in children. Unfortunately, they tend to promote hatred. To reverse this trend, we need to be teaching "Love your enemy." Read More

The Shape and Color of Song in Germany

By Maureen Seaberg on February 20, 2012 in Tasting the Universe

Alexandra Kirschner of Stuttgart teaches young synesthetes to sing through the imagery they see while forming sound. Read More

Why Adolescents Don't Care What Parents Think

By Carl E. Pickhardt, Ph.D. on February 20, 2012 in Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

Consider two common war cries of the adolescent age: "You can't make me or stop me!" "I don't care what you think!" Both are declarations of independence. With the first war cry, the teenager lets parents know that she alone makes her decisions. Read More

The Sweet Song of the Shy Child

By Greg Markway, Ph.D., on February 19, 2012 in Shyness Is Nice

Parenting the shy or anxious child is a series of exercises in letting go. We want to protect our child from the difficulties and pain of the world, yet we know that meeting those challenges is what gives our child the strength to succeed. Read More

Treat Your Baby Like a Monkey!

By Carl Beuke, Ph.D. on February 19, 2012 in You're Hired

Think you're smarter than a chimpanzee? So why does your baby cry and scream so much more than her offspring? What can new parents learn from how non-human primates raise their young? Read More

Why Parents Matter (Especially!!) to Teens

By Kenneth Ginsburg, M.D., M.S.Ed on February 18, 2012 in Raising Resilient Children and Teens

It is so easy to feel pushed away by our teenagers. After all, it's not uncommon for them to tell us that they can't stand us. In case that weren't enough, there are plenty of messages out there that suggest that we just don't matter anymore anyway—that the media and peers are today's parents. As a point of fact, those messages are dead wrong! Read More

America No Longer Works for Half Its People (Or More)

By Stanton Peele on February 18, 2012 in Addiction in Society

The inequality discussion has devolved into the lost generation—and beyond—of working class children. The question isn't "What remains of the American dream?" It is, "Can a nation continue to exist on this basis?" Read More

Serving Up Bebe: The Real Tiger Moms

By David Hirshleifer on February 18, 2012 in What Lies Beneath

The provocative ideas about discipline and child-rearing in Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, have stimulated a smorgasbord of competitors, such as Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bebe about virtues of French moms. But it's mothers from the ancient Greek tradition who beat them all. Read More

Whitney Houston, Jeremy Lin, David Brooks, Religion and Addiction

By Stanton Peele on February 17, 2012 in Addiction in Society

David Brooks says that New York Knicks basketball sensation Jeremy Lin is a wonder whose religious devotion should be honored. Okay. But Whitney Houston's immersion in religion coming up had dire consequences. Read More

The Fallacy of the Parental Fool

By Steve Baskin on February 16, 2012 in S'mores and More

TV programs targeted at children portray adults and parents as fools. While this is amusing to children, it is harmful to their relationships with parents. Here are some suggestions to address this challenge. Read More

How Much Sleep Do Kids Really Need?

By Shelby Harris, PsyD on February 16, 2012 in The Land of Nod

An extremely heated debate has just arisen in the field of pediatric sleep medicine—a field that is generally not very excitable. In this week's issue of Pediatrics, University of South Australia's Health and Use of Time Group reported that kids' nightly sleep time has reduced by three-quarters of a minute for each year they studied. Read More

Are Children Harmed Viewing Sexually Explicit Websites?

By Michael Ungar, Ph.D. on February 15, 2012 in Nurturing Resilience

It isn’t altogether clear which comes first, our children’s promiscuity, sexual activity following drug use, and other high risk sexual activity, or whether kids who are already interested in these behaviors are looking to the internet for information. Read More

Ritalin Results Gone Wrong

By Polly Palumbo, Ph.D. on February 15, 2012 in Momma Data

A retired psychologist stirred controversy claiming medications for attention deficits don't have long-term benefits. Some responded by praising the drugs, some denouncing them. Parents told how the drugs saved their kids. Psychologists spoke of the needs of the individual child. Hardly anyone mentioned empirical evidence. Read More

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