Why children believe (or not) that Santa Claus exists

(THE CONVERSATION) The holiday season is upon us, and so are its attendant myths, most prominent of which is the Santa Claus story. This is the time that many children are told about a man who lives forever, resides at the North Pole, knows what every child in the world desires, drives a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and enters one’s house through a chimney, which most children don’t even have.

Given the many absurdities and contradictions in this story, it’s surprising that even young children would believe it. Yet research from my lab shows that 83 percent of five-year-olds think that Santa Claus is real.

Why?

An evolutionary advantage?

At the root of this paradox is a very basic question regarding the nature of the young child as an inherently credulous being – that is, believing everything he or she is told – versus a rational one.

The noted author and ethologist Richard Dawkins, in a 1995 essay, proposed that children are inherently credulous, and prone to believing in just about anything. He even suggested that it was an evolutionary advantage for children to believe.

He illustrated that quite convincingly with an example of a young child living near an alligator-infested swamp. His point was that the child who is skeptical, and prone to critically evaluating his parents’ advice not to go swimming in that swamp, has much less chance of surviving than does the child who unthinkingly heeds his parents’ advice.

This view of young children who believe easily is shared by many, including 18th-century philosopher Thomas Reid, and developmental psychologists, who argue that children are strongly biased to trust what people tell them.

Not very different from adults?

Yet research from my lab shows that children actually are rational, thoughtful consumers of information. In fact, they use many of the same tools as adults to decide what to believe.

So, what are some of the tools that adults use to decide what to believe, and what evidence is there that children possess them?

I’ll focus on three: One is attention to the context in which new information is embedded. A second is the tendency to measure new information against one’s existing knowledge base. And the third is the ability to evaluate the expertise of other people.

Let’s look first at context.

Imagine reading an article about a new species of fish – let’s call them “surnits.” Then imagine you’re reading this article in two very different contexts – one in which your doctor is late and you’re in the waiting room reading the article in a copy of National Geographic, the official magazine of a scientific society.

In another context, you encounter a report of this discovery while waiting in line at the grocery store and perusing the National Enquirer, an American supermarket tabloid. My guess is that the context surrounding your introduction to this new information would guide your judgment about the reality status of this new fish.

We essentially did this with children. We told them about animals they’d never heard of, like surnits. Some children heard about them in a fantastical context, in which they were told that dragons or ghosts collect them. Other children learned about surnits in a scientific context, in which they were told that doctors or scientists use them.

Children as young as four were more likely to claim that surnits really existed when they heard about them in the scientific context versus in the fantastical context.

How children use knowledge and expertise

One of the primary ways we, as adults, learn about new things is by hearing about them from others. Imagine hearing about a new kind of fish from a marine biologist versus from your next-door neighbor who often regales you with reports of his alien abductions. Your evaluation of the expertise and trustworthiness of these sources presumably will guide your beliefs about the true existence of this fish.

In another research project, we presented young children with novel animals that were either possible (e.g., a fish that lives in the ocean), impossible (e.g., a fish that lives on the moon) or improbable (e.g., a fish as big as a car). Then we gave them the choice to figure out on their own whether the entity really existed or to ask someone. They also heard reports from either a zookeeper (an expert) or a chef (a nonexpert).

We found that children believed in the possible entities and rejected the impossible ones. Children made these decisions by comparing the new information to their existing knowledge. For the improbable animals – ones that could possibly exist but were rare or odd – children were significantly more likely to believe in them when the zookeeper claimed they were real than when the chef did.

In other words, children use expertise, just as adults do.

It’s the adults

If children are so smart, why do they believe in Santa?

The reason is simple: Parents and others go to great lengths to support the Santa myth. In a recent study we found that 84 percent of parents reported taking their child to visit more than two Santa impersonators during the Christmas season.

The Elf on the Shelf, originally a children’s picture book about elves who inform Santa about children’s behavior around Christmastime, is now a multi-million-dollar franchise. And the United States Postal Service now promotes a “Letters from Santa” program in which it provides personal replies to children’s letters to Santa.

Why do we feel compelled to go to such great lengths? Why does Uncle Jack insist on climbing onto the roof on Christmas Eve to stomp around and shake jingle bells?

The answer is simply this: Children are not unthinkingly credulous and do not believe everything we tell them. So, we adults must overwhelm them with evidence – the bells on the roof, the live Santas at the mall, the half-eaten carrot on Christmas morning.

How children evaluate

Given this effort, it essentially would be irrational for children not to believe. In believing in Santa Claus, children, in fact, exercise their scientific thinking skills.

First, they evaluate sources of information. As ongoing research in my lab indicates, they’re more likely to believe an adult than a child about what’s real.

Second, they use evidence (e.g., the empty glass of milk and half-eaten cookies on Christmas morning) to come to a conclusion about existence. Other research from my lab shows that children use similar evidence to guide their beliefs about a fantastical being, the Candy Witch, who visits children on Halloween night and leaves new toys in exchange for candy.

Third, research shows that, as children’s understanding becomes more sophisticated, they tend to engage more with the absurditiesin the Santa Claus myth, like how a fat man can fit through a small chimney, or how animals could possibly fly.

Wondering what to tell your child?

Some parents wonder whether they are harming their children by engaging in the Santa myth. Philosophers and bloggers alike have mounted arguments against perpetuating the “Santa-lie,” some even claiming that it could lead to permanent distrust of parents and other authorities.

So, what should parents do?

There is no evidence that belief, and eventual disbelief in Santa, affects parental trust in any significant way. Furthermore, not only do children have the tools to ferret out the truth; but engaging with the Santa story may give them a chance to exercise these abilities.

So, if you think it would be fun for you and your family to invite Santa Claus into your home at Christmas time, you should do so. Your children will be fine. And they might even learn something.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/why-children-believe-or-not-that-santa-claus-exists-70518.

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

New Fitbit smartwatches equipped with special trackers, features for kids

With three new smartwatches set to be released in the next few weeks, Fitbit has health covered for the entire family. With specially designed trackers and features for kids, adults, women and runners, here we round up what you can expect from the new launches.

Fitbit Ace

To get kids more excited about sport, Fitbit has designed the Fitbit Ace especially for those age 8 and over to reward activity and make fitness fun. With some help from mom and dad kids can set their own activity goals with the Fitbit Ace, and receive rewards and badges for achieving them. The Fitbit App: Kid View has also been designed especially for children so they can see how they are doing, with a separate Parent View available for mom and dad. To help keep kids moving children can also challenge friends to step competitions, with reminders to move giving them a nudge to stay active all day long. Sleep Tracking also takes note of their shut-eye. Available in electric blue or purple, the Fitbit Ace also has ten child-friendly clock faces to choose from. The Fitbit Ace is available to pre-order now priced at $99.95 (about P5,200) and is due to ship late May.


Fitbit Versa

The Fitbit Versa tracks all of the essential health statistics including steps taken, distance, calories burned, active minutes and heart-rate tracking, and of course allows users to set goals and monitor their progress using the Fitbit app. In addition, users can track specific workouts such as running, cycling, and swimming, and follow personalized on-screen workouts on the watch face, which will coach you through each move.

When you’re not on the go the Versa will also track sleep, including time in light, deep and REM stages, while guided breathing sessions will help users take a moment for mindfulness and reduce stress levels.

Fitbit has also included a Female Health feature, with the Versa allowing women to use the tracker with the Fitbit app to make a note of your period and any symptoms, and compare your cycle with other health stats such as sleep, activity and weight. The Fitbit Versa is available to pre-order now priced at $199.95 (over P10,400) and is due to ship in April.

Fitbit Ionic: Adidas Edition

In addition to the existing Fitbit Ionic, the brand is now also releasing a special edition of the smartwatch in partnership with Adidas. The Fitbit Ionic: Adidas Edition features a new and exclusive app, Adidas Train, which allows users to access unique workouts to improve running performance. Each workout will offer step-by-step coaching designed to improve a different aspect of running such as speed, form or power. The new smartwatch will also come with an adidas-designed clock face and new accessory options, with two-toned sport bands available in Ink Blue and Ice Gray with Silver Gray aluminum case. The Fitbit Ionic: Adidas Edition is available to pre-order now priced at $329.95 (over P17,000) and is due to ship in March. JB

source: technology.inquirer.net

Buy Life Insurance with Social Security Benefits to Create a Retirement Nest Egg for Your Kids

Are you at or near the point of qualifying for Social Security benefits? If so, you may or may not need those payments to supplement your other income sources. For many of us, the focus becomes repositioning those payments to create a greater legacy for our kids or charity. We’ve dealt with this issue at length and below you’ll find a few ideas about how to handle this situation. 


Using Social Security to Buy Life Insurance

Let’s take Jim, a retired executive who has accumulated $15 million in assets over his lifetime. At 69 years old, Jim still has not turned on Social Security benefits because he knows they continue to increase each year that he waits. However, at 70 years old, the payments max out and there is no further benefit to waiting.

Jim’s plan is to turn on the roughly $40,000 of income and have it directly deposited into his checking account. In the process, he will withhold one-third of the payment to cover taxes that will be due on the income. Jim is trying to figure out the best way to leverage those payments into an eventual legacy, either for his kids or charity, and how to do so without increasing the size of his taxable estate.

We believe Jim should use his payments to buy a life insurance policy. Doing so will allow him to access some incredible advantages not offered through other vehicles. First, to prevent his Social Security payments from increasing the size of his estate, Jim decides to set up an irrevocable life insurance trust in which to purchase the policy. He decides to make his cousin the trustee and his two kids the beneficiaries. 

Given the roughly $25,000 that is left after paying taxes, Jim can purchase over $1 million of life insurance. As soon as he makes that first premium payment, the $1 million benefit is locked in. This strategy perfectly meets Jim’s desire to create a future nest egg for his kids without increasing the size of his estate. Plus, he can do so without taking on the market risk associated with stocks and bonds. 


Charitable Giving with Social Security Payments

Now, let’s suppose Jim wanted to use those payments to support his favorite charity instead. Rather than own the policy himself, he can $40,000 each year to the charity and have them use the money to buy a life insurance policy. Why would he do this? By donating the money, he can more than likely take a tax deduction for the full $40,000, part of which is the net amount of his Social Security income.

Also, by having the charity own the policy rather than himself, he is avoiding the death benefit being included in his estate: Nothing would upset Jim more than watching 40% of his gift slip away to unnecessary taxation. Also, because his premium is now $40,000 per year instead of $25,000, the face amount of his policy has jumped from $1 million to $1.5 million.  

When we compare the results of these strategies against the alternatives, it’s hard to rationalize a different move. If Jim just took his Social Security payments, paid the tax, and gave the proceeds to charity, he would likely give them somewhere between $300,000 and $600,000 in total depending on how long he lives. By using life insurance, he creates a $1.5 million gift, even if he dies in year one! 

If the charity is wise, they can choose to only spend the interest from that lump sum and create a gift that gives forever into perpetuity. Life insurance also provides a guaranteed death benefit, avoiding the volatility and uncertainty of market investments.   


The advisors at Howard Kaye can show you how to think differently about your estate plan. A fairly simple strategy such as the one illustrated above can change lives, just by taking an extra income stream and repurposing it for the benefit of your family or charity. Call 800-DIE-RICH to speak with us today and let us start crafting a similar plan for you.

source: howardkayeinsurance.com

Oldies but still goodies delight viewers in spinoff show

For months now, “Little Big Shots” has won many viewers over with its weekly parade of amazingly precocious kiddie talents. Recently, however, the fave show has taken a curious detour in the opposite direction, showcasing oldies but still goodies in its “Forever Young” spinoff show.

The sudden shift has not been easy to take, but we gamely went along for the detour ride last week—and, despite an initial awkwardness, found ourselves liking the oldies just as much as the kiddies.

The rule now appears to be: Don’t even dream of showcasing your talent on the seniors’ show if you aren’t at least 60 years old. The idea is to show that age is only a number for the determinedly gifted and eager to please, so now merely middle-aged folks can make the grade.

—Which is not to say that all of the “Forever Young” talents look old and doddering. Indeed, the program loves surprising and even “shocking” viewers with how young and fit its featured seniors are, and what amazing feats they’re still capable of pulling off, despite their senior status.

For instance, a demure lady from China floored program host Steve Harvey with her audacious pole-dancing act! There was nothing demure or doddering about the fancy aerial splits she performed from way up high—and her legs were still lovely and lissome, for good measure.

Also scoring a direct hit with viewers was an old gent who did a nifty and shifty modern dance routine with a bevy of young chorus girls—even if he was already in his 80s!

Another senior entertainer who wowed the studio audience made his grand entrance stuffed into a very small metal box. He proceeded to slowly extricate himself out of the tiny cage, limb by limb—and, when he finally freed and presented himself in all his physical glory, he turned out to be a huge man, who just happened to possess an astoundingly pliant body that he could “fold” into that “impossibly” tiny space!

To make the amazing point even more convincing, he then proceeded to make his exit—by reversing the process, slowly “disappearing” back into his confining cage, again limb by limb—to the twice-delighted audience’s riotous applause!

We don’t know how long “Little Big Shots” intends to take its current “Forever Young” detour. If the senior talents it features are as good as the batch we saw, the spinoff could become a permanently separate show.

Reality check, however: US TV ratings show that “Forever Young” isn’t rating as high as “Little Big Shots”—which could make it a temporary detour gambit.

Even if it eventually says bye-bye, however, viewers will be grateful for its welcome reminder that talent will out at any age!

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

9% of California kids have never seen a dentist

PALO ALTO, California – Nine percent of children ages 2 to 11 in 2013-14 had never had a dental visit, according to data from the California Health Interview Survey.

The Length of Time Since Last Dental Visit for kids in California survey comes on the heels of the Little Hoover Commission’s scathing report on Denti-Cal, the dental health care program for 13 million low-income Californians.

Counties with the highest percent of young children who had never visited a dentist were San Joaquin County at 28 percent, Shasta County at 19 percent and Fresno County at 18 percent.

In over 12 additional counties, at least 10 percent of children hadn’t visited a dentist, including Santa Clara County, Sacramento County and Los Angeles County.

Tooth decay is the most common chronic disease among children ages 6 to 18. Untreated dental problems, such as cavities and gum disease, can affect a child’s health and quality of life by causing pain, nutritional and sleep problems, impaired concentration and increased school absences, as well as lost work hours for parents.

If dental disease is not treated early, it can result in more serious and expensive intervention later on.

Tooth decay and other oral diseases disproportionately affect low-income children, children of color, and uninsured children. For this reason, the federal government has set a public health goal focused on improving access to preventive dental services for low-income children.

The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes dental health care for children in the essential health benefits that must be covered by all qualified health insurance plans, a major step forward in ensuring access to oral health care for children.

According to experts, policy options that could influence children’s dental health include: increasing reimbursement rates for dental providers under public insurance programs; creating incentives for them to treat low-income children; increasing the number of pediatric dentists where Medi-Cal patients live; setting pediatric dental benefits under ACA at affordable rates to allow low-income families to access the services; reinstating state support for children’s dental disease prevention; and ensuring that all communities have fluoridated drinking water, as evidence suggests that it reduces cavities among children.

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Allergies may boost chances of anxiety or depression symptoms

Kids who have allergies at an early age are more likely than others to also have problems with anxiety and depression, according to a new study.

As the number of allergies increase, so do internalizing behavior scores, the researchers found.

Internalizing behaviors include disorders, like anxiety or depression, that develop when people keep their problems to themselves, or "internalize" them.

“I think the surprising finding for us was that allergic rhinitis has the strongest association with abnormal anxiety/depression/internalizing scores compared to other allergic diseases,” said lead author Dr. Maya K. Nanda of the division of Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology, at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.

Rhinitis includes the “hay fever” symptoms of runny nose, sneezing and itchy, watery eyes.

The researchers studied 546 children who had skin tests and exams at age one, two, three, four and seven and whose parents completed behavioral assessments at age seven. They looked for signs of sneezing and itchy eyes, wheezing or skin inflammation related to allergies.

Parents answered 160 questions about their child’s behaviors and emotions, including how often they seemed worried, nervous, fearful, or sad.

Kids who had allergic sneezing and itchy or watery eyes or persistent wheezing at age four tended to have higher depressive or anxiety scores than others at age seven, the researchers reported in Pediatrics.

Anxiety and depression scores increased as the number of allergies increased.

“This study can't prove causation. It only describes a significant association between these disorders, however we have hypotheses on why these diseases are associated,” Nanda told Reuters Health by email.

Children with allergic diseases may be at increased risk for abnormal internalizing scores due to an underlying biological mechanism, or because they modify their behavior in response to the allergies, she said.

Like other chronic diseases, allergic diseases may trigger maladaptive behaviors or emotions, she said, but some prior studies support a biologic mechanism that involves allergy antibodies triggering production of other substances that affect parts of the brain that control emotions.

Earlier studies have found links between allergies and anxiety disorders such as panic attacks or generalized anxiety disorders, Nanda said.

The new study took race, gender and other factors into account, “so the strong association between allergic disease and internalizing disorder we found is definitely present,” she said.

The severity of mental health symptoms varied in this study. Some children had anxiety and depression that needs treatment, while others were at risk and required monitoring, she said.

“We think this study calls for better screening by pediatricians, allergists, and parents of children with allergic disease,” she said. “Too often in my clinic I see allergic children with clinical anxiety [or] depressive symptoms; however, they are receiving no care for these conditions.”

“We don't know how treatment for allergic diseases may effect or change the risk for internalizing disorders and we hope to study this in the future,” Nanda said. — Reuters

Kids get more cavities when they live with smokers, says Japan study

Young children are much more likely to get cavities if they live in a household with smokers, a Japanese study suggests.

Compared to children in non-smoking households, kids living with smokers were more than twice as likely to have cavities at age three.

Even when smokers in the home didn’t light up near the children, these three-year-olds were 50 percent more likely to have cavities than kids who didn’t live with smokers, the study found.

The findings should give parents another reason to quit smoking, and another way for health care providers to talk to them about cessation, said senior author Koji Kawakami, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.

“Education on the harm of secondhand smoke might increase if dentists became aware of the risk of [cavities] as well as tobacco consumption of their clients,” Kawakami said by email.

To understand the connection between secondhand smoke and cavities, Kawakami and colleagues examined data on almost 77,000 children born between 2004 and 2010 in Kobe City, Japan.

To be included in the study, children needed data on household smoking status when they were infants, as well as records from dental exams done at 18 months and three years.

Overall, about 55 percent of the children lived in households with smokers, but only about 7 percent had people who smoked around them instead of lighting up somewhere away from the kids.

By age three, 14 percent of the kids in non-smoking households had cavities, compared with 20 percent of children who had smokers in the home who tried not to use cigarettes in their presence, and 28 percent of kids who were directly exposed to the smoke.

Children of women who smoked during pregnancy didn’t appear to have an increased risk for cavities, the authors reported in the medical journal BMJ.

One limitation of the study is that it relied on mothers to honestly report smoking in the home on questionnaires, the authors acknowledge. In particular, women may have underreported smoking during pregnancy.

In addition, because the study was observational, and didn’t randomly assign groups of children to live with or without smokers, the findings can’t prove that smoke exposure causes cavities.

Two things in Japan—lack of fluoride in the water and less sugar in a typical diet—might make results for these children different than what researchers might see in the US and other countries, where children consume more sweets and have fluoride-enhanced drinking water, the authors also note.

But the connection between cigarette exposure and cavities is strong enough that the US Surgeon General has warned that secondhand smoke may be associated with an increased risk of tooth decay in children.

“This study simply adds to the body of evidence that associates secondhand smoke and an increased risk of tooth decay among children,” said Jonathan Shenkin, a researcher in pediatric dentistry at Boston University and a spokesperson for the American Dental Association.

“Tooth decay is the most common chronic disease in childhood,” Shenkin, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. For parents, “knowing they can protect their children against pain and suffering will hopefully be a strong motivator to quit smoking.” — Reuters -

Talking to kids about smoking risks may help parents quit

Parents who quit smoking may be less likely to relapse when they discuss the dangers of cigarettes with their children, a US study suggests.

Researchers followed almost 700 ex-smokers with children for one year. Half of the parents received a series of mailers with educational materials explaining the risks of tobacco and activities to help them discuss these dangers with their children. The other parents served as a control group and didn’t get any help.

After one year, the parents supported by mail were twice as likely to still be abstinent.

More research is needed to explain why this happened because the findings came from a project designed to test something different – whether parents prompted to talk about cigarettes with their kids might help prevent their children from smoking, noted lead study author Christine Jackson.

It’s possible, however, that talking to kids helped parents cement their own identities as non-smokers, or that the conversations created a feeling of cognitive dissonance that made it difficult for participants to advocate against smoking while being smokers themselves, said Jackson, a senior research scientist at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

“Our research is important because it suggests an entirely new approach to helping adults, specifically adults who are parents of school-aged children, succeed in quitting smoking,” Jackson said by email.

To understand how parent-child conversations about smoking might influence tobacco use, researchers asked parents of children aged 8 to 10 years old to participate in a study when they called a smoking cessation hotline available in 11 US states.

Parents were around 37 years old at the start of the study, and they had typically started smoking when they were about 16.

Most of them had tried to quit at least once before the current attempt and had a previous daily habit of at least 20 cigarettes, or about a pack a day. Many parents also lived in households with at least one or two current smokers.

The parents in the support group received six magazines with tips to prepare them for conversations about smoking with their children, as well as supplies to complete structured anti-smoking activities with their children.

Only 465 out of the original 689 parents remained in the study by the end of the year. When researchers counted all of the dropouts as parents who relapsed, the effect of the mailers remained meaningful, though smaller.

After accounting for the dropouts, parents who received mailers were still 58 percent more likely to remain abstinent by the end of the study, the authors report in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

In addition to the high dropout rate, other shortcomings of the study include the reliance on parents to accurately report whether they remained abstinent and the lack of data to explain why parents who received mailers were more likely to avoid tobacco.

Even so, the findings suggest that parents may reinforce what they know about the benefits of smoking cessation by teaching these lessons to their children, said Jonathan Bricker, a behavioral scientist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

“Humans tend to want to act consistent with what they teach others,” Bricker, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “By teaching your child, you hold yourself more accountable. If you teach it, you are more likely to do it yourself.”

Regarding the experiment's original focus, Bricker noted, previous research has found parents who stop smoking when their children are young may cut the risk that their kids will start smoking by as much as 40 percent.

When parents quit, this can also nearly double the odds that any children who smoke may also quit, he added. — Reuters

Sleep-deprived kids are more tempted by food

Children who don’t get enough sleep might be more tempted by food, a new study suggests.

Five-year-olds who slept less than 11 hours a night were more eager to eat at the sight or reminder of a favorite snack, compared to those who slept longer, researchers reported in the International Journal of Obesity.

The children who slept less than 11 hours at night also had a higher body mass index – a measure of weight in relation to height – than those who slept 11 hours or more. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 11 to 12 hours of sleep for pre-school children.


“There is now accumulating evidence in both children and adults to suggest that short or insufficient sleep increases reward-driven ('hedonic') eating,” said Laura McDonald, the study’s lead author and a researcher at University College London, in email to Reuters Health.

“This is, of course, a concern,” she added, “given that we live in a modern ‘obesogenic’ environment” where tasty, high-calorie foods “are widely available and cheap to consume.”

Previous studies have shown that too little sleep significantly increases the chances that a child will be overweight or obese, McDonald and her team point out. But less was known about how sleep affects daily calorie intake.

“Some studies using brain imaging in adults have shown that sleep restriction increases responsiveness in reward centers of the brain in response to images of palatable food . . . however, no studies in children have examined whether sleep changes food responsiveness,” noted McDonald.

The new study involved 1,008 five-year-olds born in 2007 in England and Wales. The researchers had mothers answer a questionnaire about their youngsters’ responsiveness to food cues and their behavior toward food when they were presumably full, soon after eating.

The average sleep duration for the children in the study was 11.48 hours.

Among kids who slept less than 11 hours a night, food responsiveness was 2.53 on a scale of 1 to 5, compared to 2.36 for those who slept 11 to 12 hours, and 2.35 for those who got at least 12 hours of sleep a night.

“In children who do not get enough sleep at night, limiting exposure to palatable food cues in the home might be helpful at preventing overconsumption,” McDonald said.

The study found no link between sleep duration and whether kids were still willing to eat when they were full.

While the study can’t prove that less sleep causes more eating, McDonald said another possibility is that the reverse might be true. “It is definitely a possibility that food responsiveness might impact sleep behavior,” she said. “For example, it could be that children who are more food responsive are also more difficult to settle at night (when adults or older children might be eating).”

Emerson Wickwire, director of the Insomnia Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told Reuters Health by email that the study adds a new twist to research showing sleep is a risk factor for obesity.

“The current study suggests a new potential explanation (hedonic eating) for weight gain among children who sleep less . . . in other words, kids in the study who slept less were more susceptible to unhealthy food cues in the environment,” said Wickwire, who was not involved in the study.

Wickwire said the study also showed the importance of sleep for children.

“We know that parents have a huge influence on the sleep patterns of five-year-olds. So really, it’s incumbent on parents to make sure their kids are getting enough sleep,” said Wickwire, a board-certified sleep specialist. —Reuters

YouTube launches kid-friendly mobile app

Children can now access YouTube on mobile devices without parents worrying they might stumble into inappropriate content.

Google on Monday rolled out the YouTube Kids app to devices running Android via Google Play and to Apple devices via the App Store.

"Today, we’re introducing the YouTube Kids app, the first Google product built from the ground up with little ones in mind. The app makes it safer and easier for children to find videos on topics they want to explore, and is available for free on Google Play and the App Store in the U.S.," YouTube Kids Group product manager Shimrit Ben-Yair, a mother of two, said in a blog post.

She said the app has a bright and playful design with larger images and bold icons, making it "fast and simple for little thumbs to navigate."

A voice search feature allows a child who can’t spell or type to still find videos.

Content is narrowed to content appropriate for children, even as parental controls include a timer, sound settings and product feedback.

The app is available via Google Play and the Apple App Store. -Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Kids tend to eat more when playing computer games featuring candy

NEW YORK - Kids eat more calories when playing a computer game featuring advertisements for candy than when the game has ads for toys, according to a new study from the Netherlands.

Children with low self-control were especially vulnerable to cues from a candy-themed game and ate more sweets even when offered a reward not to eat, the researchers found.

“Impulsive children have insufficient inhibitory behavioral control, and food advertisers try to influence eating behavior, thereby making it more difficult for especially impulsive children to self-regulate their food intake,” Dr. Frans Folkvord told Reuters Health by email.

Since kids are not fully aware of the persuasive intent of food marketeers, it is very difficult for any child to be critical towards the advertisements, said Folkvord, of Radboud University Nijmegen, who led the study.

Past research has shown that food advertising influences how much children eat, but little is known about what makes an individual child susceptible, Folkvord and his colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers recruited kids between the ages of seven and 10 to play online games that had either a candy theme or a toy theme.

“We used an online memory game that is comparable to the advergames that are used by major food companies,” Folkvord said.

Kids played the simple memory ‘advergames’ on a computer. Sixteen cards marked with a candy or toy brand name and logo appeared face down. Two could be flipped over at once. On the other side, they displayed individual candies or toys. The object was to match pairs as quickly as possible.

For the study, researchers divided the 260 children from primary schools in the Netherlands into four groups. Two groups played the candy advergame while the two other groups played an advergame promoting a toy brand instead.

The kids played the games for five minutes in a room with two bowls of jelly candy and milk chocolate candy.

Researchers told one group playing each game that they could eat as much candy as they liked, and told the other group that they could eat the candy, but if they made it to the end without eating they would be rewarded.

Before the game-playing sessions, the researchers also had all the kids answer questions to gauge their level of impulsivity. Based on scores on that test, 39 percent of the children qualified as impulsive, according to Folkvord.

Overall, kids ate more calories when playing a game with a candy theme. But rewarding the kids for avoiding eating the candy in the room during the game sessions resulted in most eating fewer calories.

Children who played the candy game without the inhibition reward ate an average of 156 calories, for example, compared to 87 calories for kids who played the same game with the inhibition reward.

During the toy-themed game, kids without the inhibition reward ate 101 calories, compared to 33 calories when they had been offered the inhibition reward.

For certain more impulsive kids, however, the food cues in the candy game were stronger than the incentive not to eat. The more impulsive kids playing the candy game tended to eat the same amount of calories whether or not they had been offered the inhibition reward.

“Impulsive behavior is extremely common and it is believed to be genetic,” said Dr. Deborah A. Cohen of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

Cohen studies how the social and physical environments influence health.

Impulsiveness tends to go hand in hand with making poor decisions, said Cohen, who was not involved in the new study.

“Most of the food companies have advergames on their websites,” she told Reuters Health by email. “Exposure depends upon how much time children have free computer access and also based upon their awareness of these games.”

“Children as old as 15 do not recognize that advergames are adverts,” Folkvord said. But parents can help train kids to recognize advertising and reduce their undesired effects, like overeating, he said.

“Parents should explain to their children why food companies advertise their products and brands, helping them to become more critical, and subsequently become less susceptible,” Folkvord said.

Even then, there is only so much that parents can do, Cohen said.

“Everyone is susceptible to advertising, even those who believe they aren’t,” she said. “Parents have a limited ability to protect their children, because they do not control advertising nor is it easy for them to limit exposure to advertising.”

Counter-advertising campaigns, like the ‘truth’ campaign against tobacco use, may be one way to inoculate kids against the persuasive power of food ads, she added. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

How To Find Kids Affordable Health Insurance

Unless we are eligible for an excellent employer-sponsored group health insurance package, health insurance can sometimes be anything but affordable. When this is the case, many of us opt not to purchase health insurance for ourselves. We rationalize not purchasing health insurance by telling ourselves there are mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, and other bills to be paid.

Denying ourselves health insurance is not wise; however, denying our kids health insurance is even worse. Kids’ health needs even more attention than our health. For example, kids need immunizations to help them ward off infections and diseases and grow healthy and strong. Kids need special attention to help them learn to practice good dental care habits and nutritional ways of life. Plus, a bout of the flu, which usually means lots of rest and chicken soup for adults, could be much more serious for kids.

Do, how can we find affordable health insurance for our kids especially if we can not seem to afford it for ourselves?

The best option is to contact our state’s department of insurance. Many states in America provide at least one kind of state-sponsored health care program for individuals who can’t otherwise find affordable health insurance. Even better news is that most states in America provide kid-specific state-sponsored health care programs for kids with parents who can’t otherwise find affordable health insurance for them.

Health care provided by state-sponsored affordable health insurance for kids includes all or any combination of the following: regular check-ups and hospital visits, immunizations, X-rays, lab work, prescription medications, and even dental care.

There may be days when obtaining affordable health insurance for yourself seems impossible, but finding kids affordable health insurance is always possible. Just pick up the phone and call your state’s department of insurance. Or, check their Web sites for more information. Find affordable health insurance for your kids; make sure they grow up safe, healthy, and happy.

source: wikipresidency.com

Exercise video games may add to kids’ activity: study

NEW YORK - Giving children active video games to play while they follow a weight management program boosts their moderate and vigorous activity levels, according to a new study.

Kids who played the active video games also lost more weight than children who only followed the weight management program.

Traditionally, studies have examined what harms may come from children spending long hours sitting and playing video games.

"We thought - if you received active games - maybe we can turn this lemon into lemonade," Dr. Deneen Vojta told Reuters Health.

She is the study's senior author from the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization at the UnitedHealth Group in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

"Wouldn't it be great if instead of beating on kids about screen time we turned screen time into a positive?" she said.

For the new study, the researchers built upon an existing weight loss program for children and their parents that had been found to work.

They recruited 75 overweight and obese Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas children who were randomized to one of two groups for a 16-week study period.

Both groups took part in the weight management program at local YMCAs and schools, but one group also received an Xbox game console and two active games.

The Xbox Kinect device captures the child's body movements to operate the game. The games given to the kids in the active gaming group were Kinect Adventures! and Kinect Sports. (Children in the weight-loss program-only group received the same equipment and games at the end of the study).

All the children's activity were recorded using an accelerometer, which measures movement, during the day.

At the start of the study, the children were between the ages of 8 and 12 years old and weighed between 123 and 132 pounds (lbs). About 67 percent of the kids had a body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height, that put them in the overweight category for their age groups. The rest of the children were in the obese category.

The researchers found that children in the group that received the active games added about seven minutes of moderate to vigorous activity and about three minutes of vigorous activity to their daily routines over the 16 weeks.

Meanwhile children in the group that only took part in the weight loss program didn't experience a significant change in their activity levels or duration.

Although the difference between groups appears to be small, the researchers write in JAMA Pediatrics, the added activity among the game-users group is equivalent to about 4 lbs of fat lost over a year.

They also found a greater percentage of children in the active-gaming group were no longer in the overweight category by the end of the study. The percentage overweight had dropped a little over 9 percent in the active gaming group versus just under 4 percent in the comparison group.

"Sure enough, the outcomes were very, very good," Vojta said.

The authors note in the paper, however, that they cannot be sure the children sustained their weight loss and increased activity beyond the 16 weeks.

The findings are in keeping with results from a 2012 study that found about one-quarter of 1,200 Canadian high school students played active games. That translated to about an hour of exercise two days a week.

Still, other studies have suggested that active games don't help kids meet the daily recommended dose of physical activity. (see Reuters Health story of February 27, 2012 here: reut.rs/1fAOAMj)

Vojta said they are currently working on incorporating the weight management program into a home-based program, for instance, one that would be administered through the game console.

"In many ways, these home-based active gaming solutions solve two problems," she said.

The games give children and adults the ability to build up a tolerance to exercise in their own homes, she said, and they give people who live in rough or high-crime areas an opportunity to exercise safely. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Even kids can make their own 'Flappy Bird' game in 15 minutes with this simple tool

What better way to celebrate a flappy, er, happy first birthday than teaching children to make their own "Flappy Bird" game?

A US-based organization advocating computer science education did just that, posting on its website the code for making a "Flappy Game."

"Flappy Bird is a simple game, and using the basics of computer science, any student can create their own version with endless possibilities," Code.org said on its website.

With the code, it said children can build their own Flappy game, "whether it’s Flappy Bird, or Flappy Easter Bunny, Flappy Santa, Flappy Shark with Lasers, Flappy Fairy or Flappy Underwater Unicorn."


It also said that with the code, any student can create his or her own variation of the popular but now-defunct mobile game "with endless possibilities."





"You can make your own rules, and make your flappy game as easy or as hard as you want. You can even reverse the scoring or make it change randomly as you play," Code.org said.

But best of all, it said students can share the code with one click so their friends can play the game on any computer or phone, or even inside Facebook or Twitter.

Meanwhile, Code.org also marked its birthday with one billion lines of code written by students in under three months.

"Since we launched the Hour of Code and its follow-up course in December, over 27 million users, in 34 languages, across 170 countries together wrote one billion lines of code in our tutorials," it said.

In 15 minutes

A separate report on GeekWire said the code allows children to develop their own "Flappy Bird" game in 15 minutes.

It quoted Code.org co-founder Hadi Partovi, a Seattle entrepreneur who founded Code.org with his brother Ali, as saying the idea for a "Flappy Bird" tutorial came about during a Code.org employee happy hour.

"The entire group was playing Flappy Bird competitively when they realized they could not only play this fun game, but also let others create it," it said.

“We already know that the chance to ‘make an app’ is something people aspire to, but they think it’s out of reach. We want to give kids something that lets them express a degree of creativeness,” Partovi said.

“There are endless possibilities and kids can try them and realize the creativity involved in computer science within just 20 minutes,” Partovi added.

Code.org described itself as a "non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science education by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color."

"Our vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming. We believe computer science should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra," it said. — VC/TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Saliva reveals asthmatic kids’ smoke exposure

NEW YORK - Asthmatic children who are exposed to cigarette smoke are more likely to make repeat trips to the hospital for breathing problems. But researchers say asking parents about kids' smoke exposure may not yield the most reliable information.

In a recent study, saliva revealed exposure to tobacco smoke in roughly 80 percent of children brought to the hospital for asthma or breathing problems. But only about a third of parents said their children came in contact with smoke.

What's more, finding evidence of nicotine, a chemical in tobacco, in children's saliva was a better predictor of whether they would need to come back to the hospital, compared to the information parents gave to doctors.

"We think saliva is a good and potentially useful test for assessing an important trigger for asthma," Dr. Robert Kahn, the study's senior author, told Reuters Health.

Previous research has found that being exposed to tobacco can lead to airway problems and poor asthma control among children, Kahn and his colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics.

By figuring out which children are being exposed to tobacco, doctors may be able to step in and identify and possibly eliminate the exposure, said Kahn, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.

For example, if a parent is still smoking cigarettes and exposing the child to smoke, doctors can offer the parent smoking cessation tools while the child is hospitalized.

For the new study, the researchers assessed data from 619 children admitted to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center for asthma or other breathing problems between August 2010 and October 2011. The children were between one and 16 years old.

During the children's first couple of days in the hospital, researchers asked their parents if the children had any exposure to tobacco—either at home, in the car or in another place the children slept. Nurses also collected blood and saliva samples from the children.

About 35 percent of parents reported their children having some tobacco exposure.

However, about 56 percent of the children's blood samples and about 80 percent of their saliva samples tested positive for cotinine, a component of nicotine that's a marker for tobacco exposure.

The difference in the results of the saliva and blood tests and the parents' reports doesn't necessarily mean the parents lied about their children's exposure to smoke.

It could also be that the researchers and doctors didn't ask enough or the right questions or that the parents didn't know their children were being exposed to smoke.

"Sometimes a parent's response to a simple question may not reflect the nuances of life," Dr. James Kreindler said.

He was not involved with the new study but is an attending pulmonologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.

One in six children in the study had to be readmitted to the hospital within a year.

Parents' reports of smoke exposure weren't tied to the likelihood of children returning to the hospital. But Kahn and his colleagues did find that children were more likely to be readmitted if their saliva or blood tested positive for cotinine.

The researchers write that saliva is an attractive testing option, because it's not hard or invasive to get a sample. It also appeared to be a more sensitive test than blood.

But Kreindler cautioned that the new results don't mean children should get tested for cotinine in the hospital.

"The test they are using to determine cotinine levels is a very sophisticated test—not one that would be available to every community hospital," he said. And the treatment for asthma wouldn't necessarily change based on whether a child was exposed to tobacco, he noted.

Kreindler said a cost analysis would also be needed to look at the expense of testing.

According to Kahn, a cost analysis would most likely follow a trial of whether smoking cessation after positive saliva tests decreased hospital readmissions among children.

"The take-home message should always be that exposure to secondhand smoke for both adults and children is a significant health risk factor—particularly for children with asthma and respiratory disorders," Kreindler said. "They should not be exposed to secondhand smoke under any circumstance." —Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Screen time again linked to kids’ extra weight

NEW YORK - Children and teenagers who spend lots of time in front of screens—especially TVs—tend to gain more weight as they age, according to a new study.

The findings are consistent with research suggesting all that idle sitting and exposure to advertisements may fuel poor eating habits.

Many parents believe their children are getting a reasonable amount of recreational screen time, Mark Tremblay said. But most US and Canadian kids exceed the recommended two-hour maximum per day.

"We don't pay attention to the fact that it's half an hour here, half an hour there, an hour here, an hour there," Tremblay told Reuters Health. He is the director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada, and wasn't involved in the new study.




Researchers used data from a long-term study of kids who took surveys every other year. The surveys included questions about their height and weight as well as how much time they spent watching TV and DVDs and playing computer and video games.

Kids were between ages nine and 16 when the study started.

Out of about 4,300 girls in the study, 17 percent were overweight or obese. Twenty-four percent of the 3,500 boys were also above a healthy weight.

From one survey to the next, each one-hour increase in children's daily TV watching was tied to an increase of about 0.1 points on a body mass index (BMI) scale, which measures weight in relation to height. That's a difference of approximately half a pound per extra hour of TV.

Increases in total screen time between survey periods were linked with similar but smaller changes in BMI.

"The weight of the evidence is pretty strong that television viewing is related to unhealthy changes in weight among youth," Jennifer Falbe said.

But, she told Reuters Health, "It's important for parents to be aware of all the potentially obesogenic screens that they should really be limiting in their children's lives." Increases in DVD and video watching were tied to weight gain among girls, in particular.

Falbe led the study while at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. She is now at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

When kids watch TV, "There is more purposeful, deliberate exposure to eating options, commercials that come on that might cue you to go off to the pantry and grab a cookie or a soft drink," Tremblay said.

"Typically your hands are free when you're watching TV, so should that temptation capture you, you're able to sit there and munch on whether it's a healthy or an unhealthy snack."

What's more, he said, "You can get into a pretty much hibernative state on the couch." Even if kids are sitting down while playing a computer game, for instance, they might be a bit more active, Tremblay said.

The study didn't include many non-white or poor children, the researchers noted. So the findings may not apply to all US youth.

Another study of factors affecting childrens' weight published today in Pediatrics found that kids whose mothers and fathers reported consistent parenting—setting age-appropriate rules and expectations and following through on them—had a lower BMI than their peers. But those differences were small, Pauline Jansen from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues wrote.

In a third report in the same journal issue, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked 1.2 million children from low-income families in the US to see how their weight changed over time.

They found 11 percent of kids who were not obese before age two became obese over the next two to three years. Close to two-thirds of children who were initially obese as babies and toddlers were no longer obese a couple of years later. Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native children were more likely than white kids to become obese and less likely to stop being obese.

The study "underscores the importance of early life obesity prevention in multiple settings for low-income children and their families," according to researchers led by Dr. Liping Pan. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Be cautious with antibiotics for kids: US pediatrics committee

NEW YORK - Pediatricians should carefully evaluate kids with ear infections, runny noses and sore throats before giving them antibiotics, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases said Monday.

Antibiotics will only help shorten kids' sickness if their symptoms are caused by bacteria and not by a virus, it noted.

Still, studies show many children and adults are given the drugs for coughs and colds caused by viruses. That increases the risk of antibiotic resistance, without doing patients any good.

"People tend to not recognize how big of a problem this is," Dr. Theoklis Zaoutis said.

He is a member of the AAP committee and an infectious diseases specialist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 2 million Americans get infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die as a result. Any antibiotic use—appropriate or not—contributes to the risk of resistance.

Antibiotics can also come with side effects like diarrhea and rashes, which account for more than 150,000 doctor visits among kids each year. And they occasionally cause severe allergic reactions.

Symptoms of bacterial and viral respiratory infections can overlap, the committee said. So pediatricians should use strict criteria to decide when antibiotics are warranted.

For ear infections, toddlers who have severe pain and infections in both ears are most likely to benefit from the drugs, the AAP said. But in most cases, symptoms will go away on their own - so a wait-and-see approach is an option for older kids who are not in a lot of pain.

Antibiotics for runny noses and coughs should be used when symptoms are severe, have been around for a long time or are getting worse. When kids have a sore throat, pediatricians should test only those who have certain symptoms—such as swollen lymph nodes or tonsils and a fever—for strep throat.

When antibiotics are justified, the committee recommended doctors prescribe amoxicillin or amoxicillin together with clavulanate to kids with ear infections and sinusitis.

The combination, in particular, causes diarrhea or other stomach problems among one-quarter to half of patients, Dr. Jeffrey Linder said.

"If you're going to take something that has that high a rate of adverse event, you should be pretty darn sure it's going to help you," he told Reuters Health. Linder, from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, has studied antibiotic prescribing but wasn't involved in the new research.

For strep throat, amoxicillin or penicillin is the best bet, the committee wrote Monday in Pediatrics, the journal of the AAP.

Newer, so-called broad-spectrum antibiotics are more likely to cause resistance.

"You want to use the antibiotic that has the narrowest spectrum, meaning it will kill the germs that are causing the infections but not have collateral damage on all the other bacteria within our bodies," Zaoutis told Reuters Health.

Linder said one thing doctors may need to work on is telling parents when they don't need to come to the office. For colds and other viruses—even those that last a long time—there's not much doctors can do except tell people to wait it out.

"We still have a lot, a lot of visits in healthcare for these acute respiratory infections and it's not clear to me that we as doctors are really helping patients, and we're wasting people's time and money," Linder said.

Parents can also play a role in making sure their kids don't get antibiotics unnecessarily, Zaoutis said.

"Talk to the doctor and say, ‘Do I really need that antibiotic? What are the risks and benefits of my child taking an antibiotic?'," he advised. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Spanking tied to later aggression among kids

NEW YORK - Think spanking will help teach an out of control child to stay in line? A new study suggests the opposite may be true.

Researchers found kids who were spanked as five-year-olds were slightly more likely to be aggressive and break rules later in elementary school.

Those results are in keeping with past research, said Elizabeth Gershoff. She studies parental discipline and its effects at the University of Texas at Austin.

"There's just no evidence that spanking is good for kids," she told Reuters Health.

"Spanking models aggression as a way of solving problems, that you can hit people and get what you want," Gershoff, who wasn't involved in the new study, said.

"When [children] want another kid's toy, the parents haven't taught them how to use their words or how to negotiate."

Despite mounting evidence on the harms tied to spanking, it is "still a very typical experience" for U.S. children, the study's lead author said.

"Most kids experience spanking at least some point in time," Michael MacKenzie, from Columbia University in New York, said. "So there's this disconnect."

His team used data from a long-term study of children born in one of 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The new report includes about 1,900 kids.

Researchers surveyed parents when children were three and five years old about whether and how often they spanked their child.

Then they asked mothers about their kid's behavior problems and gave the children a vocabulary test at age nine.

A total of 57 percent of mothers and 40 percent of fathers said they spanked children when they were three years old. That fell slightly to 52 percent of mothers and 33 percent of fathers who spanked at age five.

Children acted out more and were more aggressive when they had been spanked by their mothers as five-year-olds, whether regularly or occasionally.

Spanking by mothers at least twice a week was tied to a two-point increase on a 70-point scale of problem behavior. That was after the researchers took into account children's behavior at younger ages and other family characteristics.

There was no link between spanking by parents at age three and children's later behavior, however.

Kids also tended to score lower on vocabulary tests when they had been regularly spanked by their fathers at age five, MacKenzie and his colleagues write in Pediatrics.

The average vocabulary score for all nine-year-olds in the study was 93, slightly below the test-wide standard score of 100. Frequent spanking by fathers was linked to a four-point lower score. But the researchers couldn't be sure that small difference wasn't due to chance.

Gershoff said the finding is a bit hard to interpret. "I don't think that spanking makes kids stupider," she said.

It's possible that parents who are spanking are not talking to their children as often, Gershoff said. Or kids who are spanked and act out could be more distracted in the classroom.

When it comes to disciplining children, she said there's more evidence on what doesn't work long-term than what does.

"We know that spanking doesn't work, we know that yelling doesn't work," Gershoff said. "Timeout is kind of a mixed bag. We know that reasoning does work."

MacKenzie said spanking continues to seem effective to parents in the short term, which makes it hard to change their minds about it.

"It's strongly associated with immediate compliance," he told Reuters Health. "Children will change their behavior in the moment."

Because family strain and spanking often go together, he said doctors should try to support stressed parents to encourage more positive forms of discipline.

"The techniques that are designed to promote positive behaviors … oftentimes take more effort and time to put into place," MacKenzie said. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com