All Search Results
-
Does My Child Need Speech Therapy?
Many young children can overcome speech and language delays, but early intervention is key. Parents and their child’s pediatrician need to be vigilant to spot the signs and start age-appropriate therapies.
-
Does My Teen Have Thyroid Disease?
It could be easy for you to miss that your teen has thyroid disease. Symptoms can be subtle, appear gradually and be mistaken for other conditions. Hormones produced by the thyroid can affect heart rate, energy, metabolism, growth and development – so it’s important to know the signs.
-
How Much Sleep Does My Baby Need?
It’s 2:00 am, your newborn is crying again and you’re tiredly asking yourself, “But why won’t he just sleep awhile longer?” Getting a newborn on any kind of a sleeping schedule just isn’t going to happen, and for one very good reason — babies less than three months old are frequently waking for feeds and sleeping up to 17 hours a day. For the first three months, new parents must remind themselves that, for the time being, you’re in survival mode.
-
Does My Child Have a UTI?
Parents and caregivers might tend to think of urinary tract infections (UTIs) as bacterial infections that strike adults, but young children actually have a greater risk of lasting kidney damage from UTIs than any other age group. By age 5, about 8 percent of girls and 1 to 2 percent of boys have had a UTI, according to the Urology Care Foundation.
-
Does your child struggle with messy handwriting?
Writing should be about the art of putting down your thoughts on paper. Whether a child is learning to write their name for the first time, draw a picture to share a story, or compose an essay for class, the most important part of any writing is the message itself. Handwriting that is difficult to read distracts and becomes the focus. So what happens when the mechanics of writing become such a struggle that the child is focusing all their energy on how to write rather than the writing itself? Where do parents go for help when their child just can’t seem to write neatly and every attempt ends up with tears? I’ve got a solution.
-
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.
-
10 Creative Ways to Keep Kids Active
Many families are struggling to keep fit, especially with jobs and schoolwork increasingly taking place on screens at home. Because of physical distancing requirements, there aren’t as many opportunities for school team sports, and kids doing virtual learning aren’t getting PE classes at school. Think about how a brief walk to the school bus stop a few streets over and even walking between classes counts as daily exercise. Going from your bedroom to your computer hardly comes close as a substitute!
-
Helping your teen learn to make good decisions
I remember the day I graduated from high school: caps, gowns, diplomas, the whole deal. Questions that I heard over and over were, “So…what are you going to do now?” “Are you going to college?” “Where?” “What are you going to major in?” “What are you going to do with a degree in THAT?!”
-
The morning after pill: what every parent of a teenager should know
In the United States, recent news about teenage sexuality is promising. Fewer teens are having sex, and less than half of girls have sex before they graduate high school according to data from the Florida Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Teen pregnancy rates are also falling, probably due to a combination of fewer teens having sex, better long-acting birth control options such as Depo-Provera, and condom use by teens. In spite of this great news, the U.S still has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy among developed countries. Nearly 80% of teen pregnancies are unplanned, a result of birth control failure or nonuse, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
-
Preparing for Baby's Arrival... Continued
Earlier this week, we talked about several ways for new and expectant parents to become prepared for their new arrival. Here is some more helpful information that every parent should know:
