Category Archives: Current News

Topics on Mind Health, lifestyle, everyday dilemmas

Kids, Lifestyle

24/7 Eyes On Your Teen

Qustodio.com downloadable appBe the eyes on your child’s location, website views, telephone calls, text and instant messages. Know who’s talking to your child and how often. Block your child from playing computer games when they should be doing homework. Reward them when they limit themselves to the agreed upon times.  Make your teen daughter think you have psychic powers when you magically know exactly when the 20 year old guy down the street has arranged to meet her.

Ever hear someone say “Give up! You can’t watch them all the time”?  The fact that you work, can’t be home all the time and have to leave your kids everyday needn’t prevent you from being “Parent Johnny-on-the-spot”.  With the help of a number of (some even free) downloadable apps for your computers, phones, tablets and other electronic devices, you can now see everywhere your child goes on the web as well as everywhere your child goes on the map. Now, you don’t have to wonder when you call them, whether they really are at home or the library, whether they really have been working on their homework or the next video game level. These apps just might be a parent’s best friend!

Qustodio, as featured on the Steve Harvey show, is one  such app.
Available from Qustodio.com , this free download provides a report of your child’s activities. It can be placed on phones and computers without the user knowing it’s there. You can track it in real time from your desk at work or your cell phone.

mamabearapp.comMama Bear is a smart app for smartphones. It shows your child’s time of arrival and departure at physical locations, monitors Instagram photos posted, texts, tweets & messages for keywords & offensive language. It can also monitor your teen’s driving speed. Love it!

Other apps that scored high in reviews are Phone Sheriff, mSpy and Mobile Spy.

Kids

Adequate Sleep May Improve Learning and Behavior in ADHD Teens and Kids

Sleep insures better learning & behavior for teens & kids

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Harriet Hiscock, a pediatrician at Murdoch Children’s Research at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria in Australia, found that many of the problems associated with ADHD – poor behavior, school readiness, irritability and impulsiveness, declined with increased sleep.

When parents are taught how to establish night time routines, clear bed times and the removal of electronic equipment from childrens’ rooms, children were able to achieve better sleep. Their behavior was improved during the day as well as at home in the evening. Researchers noted that parents are so exhausted in the evening and may need to make a concerted effort to implement changes but noted that the results were often positive.

Researchers are examining the effect of blue light from computer screens on brain stimulation and the body’s signaling system. It has been suggested that this light overstimulates the brain making it difficult for people to fall asleep..

Kids, Mind Health

Kids Are Being Prescribed Antidepressants and ADHD Meds at Increasingly High Rates

ADHD meds & childrenIn the report, Children’s Health Spending: 2009 – 2012, issued by the Health Care Cost Institute, an increase in prescription drug use by children and teens in the United States was noted along with increasing hospital admissions for substance abuse and mental health problems. While girls were more likely to be prescribed antidepressants, boys were more frequently prescribed ADHD drugs including amphetamines, cerebral stimulants, respiratory drugs and miscellaneous anorexigenics. These increases affected boys beginning at ages 4 to 8 years while girls were more likely to begin receiving prescriptions for these central nervous system drugs in later years, ages 9 to 13.

This trend of increased medication of young children may be attributable to the publics lack of awareness of the efficacy of talk therapy to identify and reduce behavior problems in children. The added education of both parents and children when it comes to coping skills for ADHD and parenting techniques could provide essential lifelong preventive mental health skills.

Lifestyle, Mind Health

Fight dementia & Alzheimer’s: Dump the bread

Renowned neurologist, David Perlmutter, says that it’s neither consistent with reality nor current science to deny the negative effects of bread, cereals, pasta and other wheat products on brain health. He says that he feels “we owe it to the public to tell them that gluten, carbohydrates and sugar represent a modern brain threat”. He notes that medications for many common brain disorders are detrimental to health, especially for children. He notes that we do not understand the long term consequences of medication for ADHD kids, for example.

Dr. Perlmutter points out that he puts nearly all of his patients on a gluten free diet because of the overwhelmingly positive results.

Women taking antidepressant medications are 45% more likely to have a stroke and increase their risk of death by 32%, statistics that Dr. Perlmutter calls “horrifying”. If you are depressed he points to a study that claims it increases the risk of having gluten sensitivity by 230%. Movement disorders, like Parkinson’s and others, have been powerfully responsive to the removal of gluten from the diet.

Dr. Perlmutter is a board-certified neurologist and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He is the author of “Grain Brain” (#1 New York Times bestseller), “The Better Brain Book”,  and “Power Up Your Brain”. Website: http://www.drperlmutter.com

Kids

Gangs are online & coming “tweetly” to your kids

In a January 24th, 2013 article in The Cutting Edge, Desmond Patton, a University of Michigan researcher on young African American men and gang culture,  we are made aware that gangs are using social media to make threats that sometimes result in homicide.  This is called “Internet banging.”

What his studies show
Patton says that it’s the assertive voice of urban youth as heard in hip-hop music, “it’s this identity, along with unemployment and poor educational opportunities, that fuels the behavior of some African-American men?
A slow, steady growth
 Twenty years ago, I was hearing that schools on the south side were being invaded during the day by gang members who climbed into classroom windows and pulled young boys out while teachers stood by helplessly. That was the beginning of my understanding of how pervasive the gang culture had become in Chicago.  That also seemed to be the beginning of the perfusion of drugs into middle class neighborhoods on the south side. It was the beginning of the destruction of a culture that had previously extended parenting rights to nearly every adult on the block. It was the slow and steady transformation of safe neighborhoods into a network of crack houses and turf wars.
The substitute baby sitter
Since then, gangs seem to have replaced family structure in their capacity to raise our young men. And they have raised them in the art of war – war against themselves – and one that can’t be won. The very essence of gang life is one that cannibalizes its’ young –our young. Where did the parents go? How might things have changed if our sons with learning problems and diminished self-esteem were properly diagnosed, adequately supported and helped to develop their innate strengths into employable skills?
Do you know where your child is?
Friends in Chicago note that parents are unable to be effective in challenging local gangs, but gang members are someone’s grandson, or cousin or classmate from elementary school. They come from somewhere. Most Chicago blacks are the grandchildren of the Great Migration of blacks from the South. People used to ask us, “Who are your people?” The answer was presumed to tell them something about our character. It’s been a long time since then and over that time we’ve become disconnected from our people. We have lost our attachment to values that were passed down – values that held our lives securely in the family web. A beehive of disenfranchised, disregarded young men have eaten away that web while we adults have become again the slaves of the economy.
Just soldiers in a battle for the neighborhood/economy?
As with the slavery (better understood as our manpower) that brought America to economic greathood, this new voluntary slavery leaves us without control of our children’s destiny – and therefore without control of our own destiny.  Only that’s not happening just through gang members crawling into school windows. Now gangs can extend their reach right into your home, through the Internet. What can you do?
To learn more about Desmond Patton’s research, check out these articles:
Patton, D., Woolley, M., & Hong, J. (in press). Community violence, student fear and low academic achievement: African American males in the critical transition to high school. Children and Youth Services Review. Patton, D., & Johnson, D. (2010).
Community violence and social capital: African-American students in the critical transition to high school. Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. Patton, D., & Garbarino, J. (2009).
The hurting child inside the black man. In K. Vaughans & W. Spielberg (Eds.), The psychology of black boys and adolescents: Practical and applied psychology.
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