Sandra Bullock makes some very solid points about the continued double moral standard between men and women in our society. It is only by repeated public statements will the culture begin to shift.

However, she missed the universal point. I don't think a young boy would escape the slash of verbal harassment about having a lisp. While there is a natural push for social culture to demand a certain level of conformity, children do not understand the limits of this wisdom or can reason through the paradox of conformity for the sake of conformity. [Soap box time] Children need the leadership of adults in social settings, primarily schools, to learn tolerance and the dangers of scapegoating. Adults continue to abdicate this role, parents pointing at schools, schools pointing at parents. During the critical times of elementary school, teachers have the major role, there can be no doubt. Parents seldom see their kids in a group, and currently other parents do not reliably tolerate their friends parents intervening with their own children. That too needs to change, but it won't until neighbors can actually recognize each other and learn how far they can trust each other.

Our natural process of social education has broken down. We now know enough to create a scientifically based social/emotional education curriculum. It's time to act.

FOXNews.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Why is that young boys and men are unique and eccentric and mavericks when they're different but women are 'odd' when we are eccentric or different? Would I have wished someone would have said to me when I was 12 or eight when I had my speech impediment? Uniqueness is something my mother pounded it into me," Bullock recently told Tarts. "She said be unique and I didn't understand it then, now I look at it and I go I wouldn't want to be like anyone else and I know I'm off. I had a lisp as a child, it's all these things that made me different and I tried to squelch and then once I realized I had squelched them I didn't feel like myself anymore."

Bullock is so upset with the unwritten rules and regulations in today's world she wants to spread a strong message to young girls.

"Don't change, be who you are. Society is really strong in their opinions so I made peace with the fact that the things I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me," she added. "Why are we forcing people to follow another person's path in life taking away their real happiness? What is about us that is a culture that tries to get rid of what we consider the runt? Sometimes the runt turns out to be the best of the litter."

Many of the boomer adults were raised with a lot of TV. It would appear things have gotten worse. We know a lot more about what TV does to children, but it doesn't appear to have had much effect. Simple logic will tell us that the experience of TV will decrease a child's ability to tolerate a delay in gratification of desires. Certainly, the TV ads are designed to create the desire for things we didn't know we needed, a certain frustration that we can't have it all, now. But it's much worse than that.

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John M Grohol PsyD owner of PsychCentral.com is usually a man who politely understates things. But, he pulls no punches in a recent article.

Most child psychologists and child development experts recommend no TV whatsoever for a child before the age of 2 or 3. None. Yet a whopping 43 percent of parents plop their toddler down in front of the television set, apparently blind to the consequence of their actions.

[..]There are also the studies that show that teens who watch more sexual content on TV are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the next three years than their peers.

[From the Boston Globe]

Countless studies have documented the inverse link between devotion to the boob tube and achievement in school. Researchers at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in 2007, for example, that 14-year-olds who watched one or more hours of television daily "were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure.'' Those who watched three or more hours a day were at even greater risk for "subsequent attention and learning difficulties,'' and were the least likely to go to college.

In 2005, a study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the harm caused by TV watching shows up even after correcting the data to account for students' intelligence, family conditions, and prior behavioral problems. The bottom line: "Increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescence was associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood.''

The baleful effects of TV aren't limited to education. The University of Michigan Health System notes on its extensive website that kids who watch TV are more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to suffer from sleep difficulties, and to have high cholesterol.

From Research Digest Blog, here is an excerpt from an article commenting on the effects of TV on in the background while a young child plays.

Schmidt's team described the disruptive effects of the background TV as "real but small". While the current study doesn't say anything about the possible developmental consequences of TV-disrupted play, previous research has shown that shorter play episodes and less focused attention tend to be associated with poorer developmental outcomes. Moreover, a previous unpublished study by the present team of researchers showed that background TV reduces how often parents interact with their children. "Taken together," the researchers said, the new and previous findings lead us to "hypothesise that background television, as a chronic influence, is by itself an environmental risk factor in children's development."

According to these articles, Visual voodoo: the biological impact of watching TVandThe Psychologist, TV is a cause for attention deficits in children.

Sigman's review in fact only cites two published studies that show direct associations between TV viewing in this age group and negative consequences. The first, a 2004 longitudinal study by Dimitri Christakis and colleagues of 1200 children, found that for every extra hour of average daily TV viewing between birth and three years, the children were 10 per cent more likely to have attentional problems at age seven. The second, a cross-sectional study by Dimitri Christakis and Darcy Thomson, found that among 2068 infants aged between four months and three years, those who watched more television also tended to have less regular afternoon and nighttime sleeping schedules. The research base becomes more substantial when the focus is broadened to include TV viewing in older childhood and adolescence. For example, two studies by Robert Hancox and colleagues reported detrimental associations between TV viewing between the ages of five and 15, and educational attainment and several health measures at 26 years. Sigman's review, which also discusses harmful associations between adult TV viewing and mental and physical health, concludes these 'findings are set to re-cast the role of the television screen as the greatest unacknowledged public health issue of our time'. However, not all experts are sympathetic to Sigman's view. Dr Brian Young at the University of Exeter told us children are active in the way they use TV - they don't just sit on the receiving end of a stream of audiovisual input. 'There certainly are benefits for children interacting with TV,' he said. 'They learn stuff - it's as simple as that. But the best learning environment is where the mother or the family collectively consume television and discuss what's being seen. In that sense it's a 'window on the world'. However, he added: 'Any medium has a downside and unsupervised viewing by very young children - the "TV as a babysitter" - is not helpful.'

Now consider the effects of violence in TV and video games. Are we training our children to tolerate routine violence? I think so. It fact, it would appear that TV is an experiment on our children increasing obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, risky sexual behaviors, violence and social isolation.

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A Bill that I hope will become law in Minnesota and an example for the nation is moving through the Legislature.

StarTribune.com

The bill would prohibit "harassment, bullying, intimidation and violence" based on a student's personal characteristics such as race, sexual orientation or religion.

It would, in effect, "simply expand the categories of people that schools already cover with their anti-bullying policies," according to OutFront Minnesota, one of the organizations pushing for its adoption.

Education Minnesota, the state's teachers union, is the most prominent of several other groups backing the bill.

Bullying has been the scourge of childhood relationships inside and outside of schools. It has done tremendous damage to developing children at a highly sensitive time. We all know examples of the results of bullying that hit the headlines. But for every headline, there are millions of children who grow up with invisible wounds to their perception of self, their sense of safety, and their belief that they can make a place for themselves in this world.

National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals

There's probably easier ways to make a living, but I want to tell you, on behalf of all of the students in Dallas, we need you. We need you now more than ever.

Dallas Morning News

At 10, Dalton Sherman is a speech-making pro. Since winning a big oratory competition in Dallas last January, he's performed at numerous churches and events all over Dallas. He even opened an event for famed poet Maya Angelou.

"He has the 'it' factor," said Dawn Blair, Dalton's godmother. "Like Tiger has it, Obama has it. You can't put your finger on it."

And since his Wednesday speech, which left many teachers cheering and others in tears, his family has been inundated by phone calls and e-mails.

A talkative kid, Dalton bounces up and down on a couch in his family's home talking about his craft. His parents call it his "gift."

"I try to shake and move when I'm getting ready to go on," Dalton says, while demonstrating his movements. "I walk out there and I'm like here it comes--no turning back now. Then I just begin."

Dalton is a fifth-grader at Charles Rice Learning Center. His family lives down the street from Kimball High School in southern Dallas in a neat ranch house filled with photos. His brother Demosthenes, 13, is an aspiring astronaut and his sister, De'asure Crawford, 22, an accountant.

Dalton is an "A" student, plays basketball and is a blue belt in karate. His favorite books are The Magic Tree House series. He won his first oratory competition in the first grade. His family describes him as energetic and competitive. His motto is "I'm in it to win it."

This is not surprising since we already know chronic stress changes many body elements in mostly a negative way. This is the first time I've seen that relates the stress of poverty to brain changes.

This needs to be a target for prevention policy.

Blogs Scientific American Community

The authors recruited 100 middle-aged volunteers from a Pennsylvania community registry and acquired three important measures from each. First, participants provided information that qualified as an objective indicator of personal and community socioeconomic status (for example, educational attainment and household income). Second, they received the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. In this scale, participants were presented with a 10 step "social ladder" and asked to place an "X" on the step they perceived as their social standing in comparison with the rest of the United States in terms of income, education and occupation prestige. Finally, the authors also acquired structural neuroimaging data using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This technique allows investigators to quantify an individual's total gray matter volume in targeted brain regions, which can highlight specific deficits in clinical cases, as well as show the presence of greater aptitude with different executive skills (associated with increased brain volume in certain regions.)

To examine general changes in brain volume among the 100 volunteers, the authors selected three specific brain regions previously linked with chronic stress and social standing in non-human animal research: the anterior cingulate, the hippocampus and the amygdala. All three are thought to be critical components of a circuit that integrates autonomic and emotional responses to environmental stimuli and thereby direct the appropriate behavioral response (for instance, coping with stressful situation). The authors found that a lower subjective perception of one's own social status correlated with reduced gray matter in a specific subregion of the anterior cingulate, the perigenual area. This result was consistent even when objective indicators of social status (such as income) were controlled for during subsequent analyses. In addition, subjective social status ladder rankings did not correlate with gray matter volumes in either the hippocampus or the amygdala. This evidence suggests a role for the perigenual area of the anterior cingulate in the subjective perception of social standing, which may, in turn, contribute to health-related issues.

This finding builds on data showing that the perigenual area of the anterior cingulate cortex has a potential role in adaptive responses to emotional and physiological stimuli such as stressors. The region is connected with other brain structures, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, involved in learning and memory, emotional processing and the brain's response to stress. Thus, based on the role of the perigenual area and its connectivity, we can infer that decreases in brain volume in the perigenual cingulate cortex have an impact on a broad set of functions related to maintaining emotional stability and wellbeing. The fact that such decreases in brain volume are greater for individuals that perceive themselves as lower on the totem pole highlights a neural mechanism for why low socioeconomic status contributes to poor health in the long run.

Thanks to PsychCentral.com, I found facinating article from the Los Angeles Times. A recent study has found that depression is related more to misperceptions of peer interactions, especially during puberty.

Truth sometimes hurts. But for children closing in on adolescence, a firm grasp on the truth about one's standing with classmates and peers can be healthy, even when it does hurt a bit.

A new study has found that children who can accurately assess how much — or little — their peers like them are less likely to develop symptoms of depression, including sadness and difficulties concentrating or sleeping. By comparison, children with unrealistically rosy or unfoundedly gloomy views of their standing appear more likely to be headed toward depression.

Many psychologists have speculated that the smiling child who believes she is the glowing sun in her classmates' universe will be protected from depression by that belief. They also surmised that the child who holds a negative view of his status among peers is more prone to maladjustment and depression.

That picture, says Florida State University psychologist Janet Kistner, may be a bit too simple. She and fellow researchers found that the child who is not regarded well by peers — and knows it — is actually less likely to grow more depressed over time than the child who believes that classmates like him when, in fact, they don't. The kid who can see that he is not so well-liked may be better able to change his behavior to make friends, Kistner says. The kid who's clueless about her effect on classmates may grow frustrated and sad as she misses social cues and fumbles gestures of friendship.

[...]Researchers and clinicians, meanwhile, say they are far from having developed accurate predictors of a child developing depression. The younger the child, the murkier the crystal ball.

Dr. Daniel Pine, chief of child and adolescent research at the National Institute of Mental Health's Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, says that the strongest signs that a child may develop depression are a personal history of anxiety in early life; a parent with past or current depression; and a childhood pattern of low-level depressive symptoms (sadness, difficulties with eating, sleeping or concentrating, loss of energy or interest in once-enjoyed activities).

Beyond those signals, Pine says, disruptions in peer and social relationships often come with depression. But whether those ruptures are the cause of a depressive episode or the result — or a little of both — is not known.

Among children younger than 8, Kistner cautions, inflated views of classmates' affection are commonplace, and should not be misread by parents as unhealthy. But as children enter the "'tween years" of puberty, they normally become more acute in their self-assessments.[...]Acuity in reading social signals varies widely among adults, and psychologists have observed that some never get much better than they were as pre-adolescents.

[...]"That's a really fascinating time [puberty]," Kistner says — and potentially a moment when the course of a child's future mental health could be swayed. Both a child with an inflated sense of popularity and one with an overly dark view are probably sending and receiving faulty social signals, she says, and becoming frustrated that the world is not responding as the child expects."They may not be timing it right, they may be missing cues," she says — and some simple social skills counseling might help.

Will Meek has an interesting companion theory about self-esteem.

This is related to my pet theory of self-esteem, the sociometer theory. It states that the amount of perceived social acceptance or rejection predicts one’s self-esteem level. People that can accurately read the social environment know where they stand and can make adjustments to gain more social acceptance. However, those who inaccurately perceive more social acceptance and less rejection than is actually present may be prone to narcissism, where those who inaccurately perceive less acceptance and more rejection may be prone to chronic low self-esteem and depression. The key for all of this is an accurate perception of the environment, which can be an elusive skill that scientists are also trying to unravel, and misperception can be an ongoing source of psychological distress. MORE

What's remarkable about this article is that it places the critical time for emotion regulation and interpersonal relationships to puberty. That means, kids need all the tools to make sense out of this critical time BEFORE puberty. Emotion and Character education is important in the 4th and 5th grades of primary education. By 6th and 7th grade, hormones are raging and the critical period for peer based learning has begun. Intuitively, teachers have known for a long time that Junior High is a very difficult and emotional time for kids. Now we have another good reason why.

Isn't it sad that our most effective and pervasive education sources (TV) and other media is full of images that are not real, raise expectations for ourselves and others, and sets us up to feel inadequate. Those feelings help create in some girls a frenzied obsession with appearance that sometimes leads to eating disorders, some of which are deadly. And they make a few people rich.

Thanks to Dr. Deb Serani for the link.

I caught a post on Bioethics.net referring to an article in New Scientist on the work of Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman, from the University of Washington in Seattle. Christakis and Zimmerman wrote an editorial in the latest issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. It contained this quote:

We’re conducting a large uncontrolled experiment on our children and waiting to see what the results will be.

I first became concerned about the effects of television during my training as a clinical social worker. I recognized the strong effect advertisements had on me, especially as a child. I was a TV addict as a child. I probably watched as much as six hours a day from preschool through high school.

I remembered begging my parents for certain products I'd seen advertised on TV and the feeling of gratification when I got my way, and the deprivation I felt when refused. "All my friends have it," I'd complain. The truth is, I seldom really knew anyone who had what I wanted. I just assumed they did because after all, it was on TV!

College broke the habit, but only for a while. The addiction returned until TV lost it's appeal around the time my son was born. That's when my view of TV changed dramatically. I began to see the level of violence on the screen as potentially desensitizing children to the real horrors of deviant behavior. I imagined disturbed youths copying the errant behavior they see on TV in new and creative ways.

Over the years, I watched for evidence of studies documenting these effects. But not being in that field, the literature escaped my attention because it was seldom shown in the mainstream media, probably because the sponsors wouldn't allow it. Now, finally, that we have a huge source of information on the Internet, I started finding references to conclusive research on the effects of TV. Now I have no doubt that what these researchers claims are indeed true. TV is the primary educator of our children. And we have only scratched the surface in understanding how that fact is affecting their development, behavior and maturation process. We don't know if we are allowing Madison Avenue advertisers to engineer our culture to be more favorable to the sponsors. I strongly suspect that power of multi-media has a dramatic effect on our culture. We are years away from documenting it's effects.

Are we creating a materialistic culture? Many would argue that day has already arrived.

Research shows that exposure can increase obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, risky sexual behaviours, violence and social isolation, say Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman, from the University of Washington in Seattle, in a controversial editorial. The data linking violent media to aggression, for instance, are “just as strong” as those linking smoking and lung cancer, says Christakis.

US children over eight years old spend more time watching TV and playing videos than any other activity except sleeping. More than a third of those under six have TVs in their bedrooms. And things are only set to get worse, as every child with a cellphone will soon to be toting a TV in his pocket, says Christakis.

Fifteen separate papers and three editorials examine the growing problems associated with excessive media exposure and media violence. Among the findings:

• toddlers who watch more than two hours of television a day are more likely to be overweight at ages 3 and 4-and-a-half
• each additional hour of TV watched each day by kids resulted in an extra 167 calories consumed, often from sugary drinks, fast foods and candy featured in adverts
• among teenagers whose parents discouraged sex, watching two or more hours of TV per day made it significantly more likely the teen would have sex within the year
• playing a violent rather than a benign video game makes children more accepting of using drugs or alcohol, and having sex without a condom, because, the researchers suggest, it increases general disregard for the safety of yourself and others MORE

If we are going to be social engineering our children, our culture, shouldn't we be putting our best minds into this work? Do we continue to abdicate our responsibility to the Madison Avenue advertisers?

Mental Notes had a great post a few days ago listing the kinds of indications to look for in understand if your child is suffering from a serious problem. Behavior can mean many things, often because of the context of situation. You may need help to figure out what needs the attention.

I will take issue with one of his assertions. While it is true that a full assessment takes a lot of time and there is very little incentive from the doctor's perspective to do the full diagnostic and medicating as a trial is a widely used method of diagnostics, I'd advocate for the full evaluation before medicating. There are too many stories of "kids like zombies" floating around to say nothing about this.

Bring your child to a mental health professional who will take a full 45 to 60 minute evaluation, or more to determine a diagnostic of ADHD. I've known several clinicians in my community who will take 2 to 3 sessions to do a complete background including some standardized tests. I think that is justified. There is indications that behavior therapy is as or more effective than medication alone.

Hyperactivity is way over-diagnosed. I think it is because it is hard to come up with the right diagnosis amongst the differential diagnoses for behavior problems in a seven minute interview. Easier to try the psychostimulant, and then if it does not work, do the longer work-up. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder isn't even the most common cause of behavior problems.

Here are a few of the most common reasons (ie, the differential diagnosis) for behavior problems:

Stress at home. Children are very sensitive to the worries of their parents. Often parental worries become worries for the child, as well. Some children are not very good at talking about their worries, so they show as behavior problems at school. A good evaluation of behavior problems includes asking about family stress.

Learning Disorders. When a child gets frustrated because school work is too hard for him he will often let us know by having behavior problems. Children who are being evaluated for hyperactivity should be tested for learning disorders, as well.

Depression. Children with severe depression (some folks call this "clinical depression") are not always sad and mopey. Often they "tell" us that they are depressed through bad behavior. A child and adolescent psychiatrist can help decide if the behavior is a symptom of depression.

Teacher-child conflict. In my experience this is very, very rare. But one time while visiting a classroom, a teacher with her back to the classroom went on and on about all the talking going on behind her, convinced that it was my patient doing the talking. But I was watching right over her shoulder, and my patient never said a word the whole time! Even though it's unusual, sometimes a child and a teacher just don't "hit it off."

If you can't think of a good reason to support school referendums, consider this:

Enlightenment Bulletin Board - Years In Small Classes In El-Ed School Yields Graduation

A new study involving a large sample of students followed for 13 years shows that four or more years in small classes in elementary school significantly increases the likelihood of graduating from high school, especially for students from low-income homes.

Enlightenment Bulletin Board - ONE-THIRD OF THOSE WHO ENTER HIGH SCHOOLS DON'T GRADUATE

"One-third of the nation's young people is a very considerable proportion," says Barton. "Almost 45 years ago, James Conant, former president of Harvard, said that the dropout problem was ‘social dynamite.' The explosion has occurred, and will continue to occur. This is seen in growing prison populations and increasing welfare costs; in ever lower wages; in a limited labor supply for, we are told, an economy with an increasing appetite for educated workers; and in the likelihood of raising a new generation with dim prospects of doing better — and perhaps of doing worse."

Study Finds Maternal Exposure To Parasitic Infection May Increase Risk Of Schizophrenia In Offspring

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic infection that can develop from eating undercooked meat and unwashed fruits and vegetables, drinking contaminated water, or not washing one's hands after gardening or changing cat litter boxes.

I can't think of a better reason for prospective mothers to guard their personal hygiene.

Years of developmental theory by many child psychologists, most notably Jean Piaget, have held to the view that children develop the ability to abstract representational models of their world after age 4. Piaget posited that a child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. A child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight, a concept called object permanance.

Now researchers have conducted a proceedure that suggests they have that ability as early as fifteen months. Here is a lay article referring to the research. Until I see some more definitive information, I'll reserve judgement. Should this research stand up to the scrutiny of others, it would represent a major change and lead to a major rethinking of developmental model and theories of therapeutic intervention.

Psychological Reasoning Begins Earlier Than Had Been Thought

"These findings will provide parents and educators with a better understanding of how children think," Onishi said in a McGill news release. "Kids are actively trying to make sense of the things they see others do. To some degree, children think about what others can see, what others think, and what others believe."

The findings also call into question the long-held view that an enormous conceptual change takes place in early childhood in the understanding of others, Baillargeon said. "If 15-month-olds can reason about what others believe, it means that psychological reasoning is much more sophisticated than we thought, and begins at a much earlier age than we had thought."

Many years of earlier work, reviewed by Onishi and Baillargeon, have suggested that "between 3 and 4 years of age, children go from a non-representational to a representational theory of mind: They begin to understand that beliefs are only representations of reality, which can be true or false," Baillargeon said.

Because their non-verbal approach produced findings that challenge previous assumptions, Baillargeon said, it may be that the verbal tasks used in earlier work were overly complex. It could be that having to predict the actor's actions and also interpret and produce sentences overwhelmed the 3-year-old subjects, she said.

Teens Who Pledge Virginity Risk STDs

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests. [more]