How to Know If Your Child is Being Bullied
January 22, 2019
From the Child Mind Institute:
We are all aware that being bullied as a child is not a trivial thing. It not only causes acute suffering, it has been linked to long-term emotional problems, and children who lack strong parental support seem to encounter the most lasting damage.
But we also know that it's part of growing up to have painful or embarrassing social experiences, and that learning to rebound from these interactions is an important skill for kids to learn.
If our kids complain about bullying, we want to take their complaints very seriously, give them the support and tools to handle it, and intervene on their behalf when needed. But we don't want to teach them that every negative experience with their peers is a form of bullying.
Kids I'm working with will say, "I was being bullied." And when they describe what happened, sometimes it was really just teasing. Maybe someone was giving them a hard time and it was difficult to deal with. But not every incident of meanness, rejection or hostility is bullying.
When does teasing or harrassment become bullying?
Washington's First New Year Baby!
January 15, 2019
McKnight Pediatrics is proud to be the home office for D.C.'s first New Year baby of 2019! Baby Lucy was born on the first of January at 12:07 AM. She tipped the scales at 5 pounds and 7.1 ounces, and was 19.75 inches tall. Welcome to Lucy and her family!
Anxiety in the Classroom
January 8, 2019
From the Child Mind Institute:
Sometimes anxiety is easy to identify--like when a child is feeling nervous before a test at school. Other times anxiety in the classroom can look like something else entirely -- an upset stomach, disruptive or angry behavior, ADHD, or even a learning disorder.
There are many different kinds of anxiety, which is one of the reasons it can be hard to detect in the classroom. What they all have in common, says neurologist and former teacher Ken Schuster, PsyD, is that anxiety "tends to lock up the brain," making school hard for anxious kids.
Click here to learn more from the Child Mind Institute.
The Links Between Social-Media Use and Depression
January 4, 2019
From CNN.com:
Though social media can be a helpful tool for teenagers to learn and connect with friends, experts have long warned that too much Snapchatting or Instagramming can come with downsides.
There appears to be a connection between social media use and depressive symptoms in 14-year-olds, and that connection may be much stronger for girls than boys, according to a study published in the journal EClinicalMedicine on Thursday.
"There's an alarming difference," said Yvonne Kelly, first author of the study and a professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London in the United Kingdom.
Among teens who use social media the most -- more than five hours a day -- the study showed a 50% increase in depressive symptoms among girls versus 35% among boys, when their symptoms were compared with those who use social media for only one to three hours daily.
"We were quite surprised when we saw the figures and we saw those raw percentages: the fact that the magnitude of association was so much larger for girls than for boys," Kelly said.
Yet the study, conducted in the UK, showed only an association between social media use and symptoms of depression, which can include feelings of unhappiness, restlessness or loneliness. The findings cannot prove that frequent social media use caused depressive symptoms, or vice versa.
The study also described other factors, such as lack of sleep and cyberbullying, that could help explain this association.
