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  • Learning to focus on what's important: navigating a digital world

    Sometimes parenting feels like a tightrope walk. Lean a little too much this way or that and you risk a long fall that ends with a painful thud. It feels like the only way to produce a physically, emotionally and developmentally healthy child is to walk an impossibly narrow line. And often, we as parents aren’t quite sure which line is the right line to walk in the first place.

  • Pain management options to provide children comfort after surgery

    A pediatric anesthesia team is tasked with the job of bringing children into and out of anesthesia for surgery and other procedures. When your child is in the operating room, it’s the pediatric anesthesiologist and the rest of the pediatric anesthesia team who ensure that your child is given the right combination of medications in order for them to drift off to sleep for the procedure and have a smooth recovery once the procedure is complete.

  • Emotional Eating: Parenting and its effect on our children’s eating behaviors

    I was asked to speak on TV recently about an article entitled “Eating Your Feelings? Your Mom Might Be to Blame.” Of course, for TV, the story had to sound catchy, so the TV host really played up the blaming mother and grandmother aspect. That made me sad; parenting is really a hard job and it is rough to be blamed for errors we make while doing our best. The data, though, really does suggest that how we were parented may affect eating behaviors and those of our children. The issue is important, since at least a quarter of preschool children in the United States are overweight. Obesity at the age of five is a very strong predictor of whether or not someone will be obese as an adult. So how we feed our young children and how we teach them to eat really matters for their whole lives. My take is that this information is not an opportunity to point fingers, but an opportunity to learn and to do better as parents.

    What the study has to say

    The article was based on a study done by researchers at the University of Illinois and published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. It showed that primary caregivers (usually moms) who had an insecure attachment to their own mothers are more likely to have young children with unhealthy eating habits who are overweight or obese. “Insecure attachment” is a term from psychology that has to do with how we feel about parents who don’t respond consistently to our needs. Parents who grew up insecure tend to have more trouble dealing with their own children’s needs, especially when it has to do with negative things like distress, anger, or sadness. That in turn is connected with some unhealthy behaviors surrounding food and eating.

    Real life examples

    The study clearly showed that homes where children’s sadness or anger are dismissed are also homes where there are fewer family mealtimes, more television viewing time, and more “comfort feeding.” These behaviors are known to lead to obesity in even the youngest of children. For example, an overwhelmed mother might respond to a temper tantrum by feeding her toddler snacks to make him stop crying instead of using appropriate parenting techniques to deal with the tantrum. Another example might be the parent who puts her four-year-old in front of the TV to eat dinner instead of having a family mealtime, since the TV keeps the child quiet and makes her sit still longer than sitting at the table for dinner. Sadly, this also leads to overeating in the whole family.

    So, what do we do with this?

    Well, if you have a two-year-old who is already overweight, maybe there is room to work with your parenting behaviors around food. Look at how you respond to your child’s negative behaviors. Do you tell your child, “that’s nothing to be angry about?” Or do you find yourself saying, “don’t be sad?” Instead you could say, “I hear that you are angry” or “you seem to be sad.” It’s hard to do. If you need to, ask your pediatrician for suggestions to deal with (and to help your child to deal with) those negative feelings. Could you tolerate a little tantrum or some tears instead of abandoning the family table for a meal in front of the TV (we call it the brain sucker in my house)? Could you give up feeding your child snack foods or treats to console them when they are angry or sad? Could you let go of the expectation that your small child will sit still to eat and will clean her plate? Could you serve a healthy, well-balanced meal and deal with it if your “picky” toddler gives you a hard time about it or refuses to eat?

  • How to raise emotionally healthy children

    As a parent of a two-year-old and an almost four-year-old and a stepparent to a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old, the difficulties and pressures of raising healthy kids are monumental. From societal pressures to familial expectations, the constant question of “Am I doing this right?” never quite goes away.

  • One little boy's journey through the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Winnie Palmer Hospital: Dylan's story

    This story was written by Candace Forrest, mom to Dylan

  • Emergency contraception: what every parent of a teenager should know

    In the United States, recent news about teenage sexuality is promising. Fewer teens are having sex, down 3% since 2001. Approximately 44% of girls have sex before they graduate high school according to the 2011 data from the Florida Youth Risk Behavior Survey of high school students. Teen pregnancy rates are also falling; there has been a 48% decline in teen pregnancy rates since 1988, probably due to a combination of fewer teens having sex, better long-acting contraception options such as DepoProvera, and condom use by teens. In spite of this great news, the United States still has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy among developed countries. Nearly 80% of teen pregnancies are unplanned, a result of contraception failure or nonuse, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

  • Is CrossFit safe when you’re pregnant?

    Over the past several years, ultra-intense exercise programs have become increasingly popular. From P90X to INSANITY to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), it seems there’s no shortage of fitness gurus promoting the benefits of fast, high-intensity workouts designed to push your body to the limit.  Arguably, one program stands out among the rest as the most popular and most intense of the bunch: CrossFit. Once an underground fitness movement mostly practiced by elite military units and die-hard fitness fanatics, CrossFit is now a mainstream phenomenon that’s attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, from Hollywood A-listers to everyday working professionals. Increasingly, CrossFit has also become a trendy way for expecting women to stay in shape during their pregnancies. Unsurprisingly, it’s led many people to wonder if CrossFit and programs like it are safe for moms-to-be.

  • High blood pressure occurs in 20 percent of pregnancies

    Written by Dr. Torre Halscott, Senior Resident, OB/GYN

  • Does your child have abdominal pain?

    As a young child growing up just outside of New York City, I complained of stomachaches every Wednesday afternoon before going to ballet class. I vividly remember those days. Initially, my mother was very concerned because I had repeatedly begged to enroll in ballet school and was clearly very excited about the opportunity. Little did I realize what I was getting into! This particular Manhattan-based ballet school was bent on creating professional ballerinas. As a shy, cherubic, roly-poly newbie to the dance scene, I was not prepared for the intensity of the class. My mother quickly picked up on the pattern and realized that I was having a physical reaction to the stress from the rigorous dance class. Fast forward many, many years later, and here I am, a pediatric gastroenterologist, taking care of hundreds of children each year with chronic abdominal pain.

  • Want to save a life today? How about three? You can do just that by donating blood.

    It’s easy to overlook the importance of donating blood because most of us just don’t think about it until it applies to us. However when the unthinkable happens- an unexpected surgery, a cancer diagnosis, a premature baby is born- donated blood can make the difference between life and death. One out of every three people in the United States will need donated blood at some time in their lives. And for some, that time is now.

    I’d like you to meet Ethan.

    Ethan is ­14 years old. In May of 2013, Ethan was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. After undergoing 14 rounds of chemotherapy treatment, he was cancer-free and ready to go back to life as a normal teenager. However, a few months later during a routine follow-up, doctors diagnosed Ethan with a blood disorder called myelodisplastic syndrome (MDS), which then progressed to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), likely an unwanted side effect of his previous chemotherapy. He underwent another round of chemotherapy treatment and a bone marrow transplant that required him to spend 67 consecutive days in the hospital. He made it home just in time to spend Christmas with his family. He’s looking forward to finishing his treatment so that he can go back to school, play video games with his friends and enjoy his favorite sports like soccer and baseball.