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  • Does My Child Have a Sprain or a Strain?

    Sprains and strains are similar injuries with common symptoms. They often occur when children return to sports or other physical activities after a summer or holiday break. Both injuries involve tearing or trauma to the muscle, tendon or ligament tissue. But a strain — sometimes referred to as a “pulled muscle” — is a muscle or tendon injury often affecting the hamstring or lower back. A sprain refers to a stretched or torn ligament, with the ankle particularly susceptible. Both injuries bring pain, swelling, and limited flexibility and range of motion. 

  • Winnie Palmer Hospital Delivers 100,000th Baby

    Hridaya Raj is the 100,000th baby born at Winnie Palmer Hospital.

  • Is homeopathic medicine a good alternative for my child?

    While scanning the shelves of your neighborhood pharmacy looking for a product to help your sick child, you’ve undoubtedly run across homeopathic medicines at some time or another. These alternative therapies offer to treat a child’s teething pain, tummy trouble, colic, earaches, allergies, coughs and colds (among other common problems) and often make nearly irresistible promises about your child’s health and wellbeing.

  • Get to know Dr. Patricia Wheeler, pediatric geneticist at Arnold Palmer Hospital

    You could say that a pediatric geneticist is a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, working to solve the mystery of a child’s medical condition. Geneticists work with families to help determine whether a child’s illness could be caused by a change in a child’s DNA, the hereditary material that carries a person’s genetic information. Accompanied by a team of professionals, a geneticist also helps figure out whether this disorder is likely to be passed on to future generations and helps patients and families seek the best care for their condition. Some common inherited disorders that geneticists diagnose include autism, neurofibromatosis, Down syndrome, sickle cell disease and many more.

  • What to do about bedwetting

    You know the drill because it happens over and over and over again. You walk into your child’s room, and you can usually smell it before you even see it, and you think, “Uggh, he’s wet the bed AGAIN.” You start your day with the additional loads of laundry that you don’t have time for, a crying child who can sense your frustration and is overcome with embarrassment and the sinking feeling that you must be doing something wrong for this to continue happening. 

  • Get to Know Clinical Geneticist, Dr. Ingrid Cristian

    Clinical genetics is an area of medicine you may not be very familiar with, but it’s a rapidly evolving discipline that offers us much-needed clues about the how and why of disease.

  • What every parent should know about mental health in kids and teens

    As a mental health provider, I often hear how parents and guardians of children tend to think their child is “too young” to have a mental health diagnosis. It is unfortunate, but I have noticed that the stigma of having a mental health condition gets in the way of understanding and treating children many times. Mental health conditions and disorders don't only affect adults. Children and teens can experience mental health problems, too. In fact, research shows that most mental disorders follow a developmental course that typically starts early in life. According to the National Institute of Mental Health “this is true not only of conditions such as autism and ADHD, which are well known for having onset in childhood, but also for mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders. So, many people who suffer from depression, social phobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia showed signs before they were 24 years old.”

  • So you have a child that isn’t talking yet. What should you do?

    As a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, I see children with a variety of speech and language disorders. One of the most common is what is known as expressive language delay, which is when a child is not using the vocabulary and phrase/sentence length that is appropriate for their age. Although there can be specific medical reasons for the delay, it can also happen with no other diagnosis. For those kids who seem to understand everything but are not communicating at their age level, I encourage parents to work on building their child’s “intent to communicate.” 

  • How we help teens get healthy in a healthy and enjoyable way

    The Teen Xpress program is part of the Howard Phillips Center for Children and Families. We offer health care, mental health counseling, case management, and nutrition and dietary services to teens at select schools in Orange County. As the Teen Xpress mental health therapist, I meet with adolescents every day that are interested in changing their lives. Usually, the teens I work with want to make changes behaviorally or emotionally, but they often also express interest in making physical changes as well. It is not unusual to hear teens say that they want to lose weight. Teen Xpress Bus

  • What every parent should know about teens and tanning

    As the weather continues to warm and school draws to a close, teens will be heading outdoors for fun in the sun. Whether it’s a day by the pool, sunbathing at the beach, playing sports or surfing the waves, we encourage our kids to enjoy those fleeting moments of adolescent summer freedom that we adults remember fondly.