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Now I'm really in trouble. I have a couch potato (maybe call him a computer chair) kid who hardly ever goes outside and is as pale as unbleached flour.  A new study says that kids who perform physical activity (or just run around) improve their academic standing and brain power, according to newswise.com. The website reports that time taken away from lessons for physical activity is time well-spent and does not come at the cost of getting good grades, say the 24 signatories to a statement on physical activity in schools and during leisure time, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine . The Statement, which distills the best available evidence on the impact of physical activity on children and young people, was drawn up by a panel of international experts with a wide range of specialisms, from the UK, Scandinavia, and North America, in Copenhagen, Denmark, in April of this year. Now my son does play soccer for hours with friends when they're...

So you've taken your kid's phone away for using it during dinner.  Shut down computer use because he didn't do his homework.  Threatened him with dire consequences for texting while you're talking to him. I've seen it all. But now kids are telling their parents what they want them to stop doing, technology -wise. Not surprisingly, it's, put your phone away when I’m talking to you. Don’t text while you’re driving — not even at red lights. Stop posting photos of me without my permission. Who can't relate? These are some of the rules for Internet and smartphone use that kids would set for their parents, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and University of Michigan, according to newswise.com. The researchers surveyed 249 families with children between the ages of 10 and 17 about their household's most important technology rules and expectations, as well as what made those rules easier or harder to fo...

Did you know that money affects children's behavior even if they don't know the value of it? That's what a new s urvey is saying.  The act of handling money makes young children work harder and give less, according to new research published by the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and University of Illinois at Chicago, reports newswise.com. The effect was observed in children who lacked concrete knowledge of money's purpose, and persisted despite the denomination of the money. "Money is a double-edged sword. It produces good outcomes in terms of concentration and effort, but bad outcomes when it comes to helping, taking, and donating." the web site quotes Professor Kathleen Vohs, the Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing at the University of Minnesota and co- author of the study.  Five experiments and one study tested 550 children (ages 3-6) in Poland and the United States. In one experiment, the children were asked to...

We all know them. The parents who explode if the kid gets a "B."  Maybe we're even them, sometimes. But a new study has found -- unsurprisingly -- that parents who push their kids too hard inhibit their ability to learn, according to newswise.com. When parents have high hopes for their children’s academic achievement, the children tend to do better in school, unless those hopes are unrealistic, in which case the children may not perform well in school, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “Our research revealed both positive and negative aspects of parents’ aspiration for their children’s academic performance. Although parental aspiration can help improve children’s academic performance, excessive parental aspiration can be poisonous,” says lead author Kou Murayama, PhD, of the University of Reading. When aspirations exceeded expectations, the achievement of the children in the study decreased proportionately, the s...

You coulda fooled me. But did you know kids who talk back wind up being more successful in life?  At least, that's what a new study has found.  In my house it always resulted in a smack, or a sip of soap. The experts agree, this behavior is actually developmentally healthy for kids,  according to yahoo.com. Clinical psychologist Kelly M. Flanagan explains there that “the inability to say "No” — the inability to set personal boundaries — is one of the most common, insidious causes of human suffering.“  At its core, when kids push back at our authority, they’re trying to exert some sense of control over their own lives. They’re practicing that skill — flexing that muscle — with us. I'm one of those people who has a hard time saying no.  I've had to learn it very slowly.  I was raised to be a good girl and good girls don't say no.  Ever.  This led to some relationships I'd been better off not having, and jobs where I started every day...

I certainly know it's better than mine. But did you know that kids can remember tomorrow what they forgot today.  I can't even remember today what I forgot today.  My teenager often has to remind me, "Mom, you went into the kitchen for orange juice." A new study has revealed that small children can remember a piece of information better days later than they can on the day they first learned it. Researchers discovered this by showing a video game to 4- and 5-year-olds.  The object was to   remember associations between objects.  The kids who re-played the game after a two-day delay scored more than 20 percent higher than kids who re-played it later the same day. “An implication is that kids can be smarter than we necessarily thought they could be,” says Kevin Darby, a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study, at newswise.com. “They can make complex associations, they just need more time to do it.” ...

It probably should come as no surprise but kids with good memories are better liars. Or, as some people think, more intelligent. Say what? Turns out the higher a child’s verbal working memory -- the ability to process information -- the better their ability to process the verbal information necessary to tell a believable lie. Verbal working memory contributes to complex social interactions, like lying, because children need to juggle multiple pieces of information while keeping the lie in mind. Sadly, my son is a good liar.  He doesn't do it often but he's so good at it, I don't usually know he's doing it.  Maybe it's because I trust him (too much?). I have to admit, I have a good kid.  So when he does something wrong, I don't always see it.  It started out small in elementary school, where we'd ask if he had homework, he would say no, and then we'd find out (in fifth grade) that he never turned in a final paper.  Actually, now that I think ...

I admit I do it, too.  In fact, I just did it last week, when my son gave a brief talk at Princeton (yes, University) at age 13.  The reality is that Princeton was just the location of the talk, but he did give it to an audience of IEEE members. That's The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (to people like me who can't even pronounce double-precision floating point format), and yes, we were very proud. So, of course, the minute we got home, I put it up on Facebook, and went on to get over 30 likes (hey, I know, not much, but it's the most I've ever gotten!). And now researchers are saying this isn't such a good idea.   “By the time children are old enough to use social media themselves many already have a digital identity created for them by their parents,” says Sarah J. Clark , M.P.H., associate director of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health and associate research scientist in the ...

I'm not so sure about this but a new study has found that if we as parents intrude too much on our kids' computer use , it could be a bad thing.  Uh oh.  Guess I'm guilty. But not of intruding.  More of yelling at him to get off it.  But anyway. According to the University of Haifa, intrusive monitoring of Internet use by parents actually leads adolescents to increase their risky behavior online, newswise.com reports. I keep thinking about a recent episode of "Married," that slightly obscene (but funny) cable show about middle-aged marriage, where the parents of three young girls go to visit another family and the bored dad wanders upstairs to find a computer, and starts looking at porn, only to have the poor pimply teenaged son blamed by the father in the other family when the alarm he set goes off.  Guess you had to be there. Anyway, the study found that parents who very closely monitor their children’s Internet use in an attempt to reduce unsafe onl...

Ready to be scared about cell phones all over again?  A new study has found that wireless devices ARE a safety risk for children. According to newswise.com, a scholarly article on wireless safety reports that children and fetuses are the most at risk from neurological and biological damage that results from microwave radiation emitted by wireless devices, due to the higher rate of absorption of microwave radiation by children than by adults. The study describes how the fetus is particularly vulnerable to microwave radiation, which can cause degeneration of the protective myelin sheath that surrounds brain neurons.  The authors recommend that wireless toys be banned due to the serious potential health risks. Want to be scared some more?  The paper also documents cancer registry studies showing increased brain cancer incidence. Because the average latency time between first exposure and diagnosis of a tumor can be decades, the total number of tumors induced ...

So what are we doing to reduce the hours our kids watch TV?  Not much, it turns out. A new poll  has found that a bout 25 percent of parents who have children aged two to five say their children get three or more hours of entertainment screen time a day, well beyond recommended limits, according to newswise.com. The news isn't all bad:  a little more than half of those parents do try to set some limits by location: banning media devices from places like the bedroom or at mealtime. Here's what the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) had to say about TV and kids: "T he AAP discourages any screen time for children less than two years of age. For older children, the AAP recommends no more than two hours daily. The AAP suggests keeping media devices out of children’s bedrooms, keeping family routines like mealtime screen-free, and setting screen-free days for the whole family." I've flunked about all of those.  My son, who'd much rather spend time on th...

Are you quick to boast about your successes at work to a new person you're dating? Point out that you were voted "best-looking" in high school?  That you drive an Audi RS 5 Cabriolet? If you do, you're doomed.  Or so says a new study .   Newswise.com reports that r esearchers have discovered that prospective dating partners who were more humble were viewed as more attractive candidates for a romantic relationship than those less humble. In long-distance relationships, partners who are viewed as humble tended to recover more quickly after offenses than their less humble counterparts. "Researchers at Hope College, Georgia State University and the University of North Texas asked respondents to look over a fake dating profiles and rate them on a seven point scale on likability, friendliness, number of friends, fun, attraction, likelihood of going on a date and potential satisfaction with dating," the Web site says. In one study, respondents were asked to t...

This is kind of spooky, but if you think eyes in the cereal aisle are following you, you may be right. A new study has found that  consumers are 16 percent more likely "to trust a brand of cereal when the characters on the boxes on the supermarket shelves look them straight in the eye," according to newswise.com. Not surprisingly, the study also found that the gaze of characters on children’s cereal boxes is at a downward, 9.6-degree angle, while characters on adult cereal boxes look almost straight ahead. The Web site quotes on expert who says, " If you are a parent who does not want your kids to go ‘cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,’ avoid taking them down the cereal aisle. If you are a cereal company looking to market healthy cereals to kids, use spokes-characters that make eye contact with children to create brand loyalty.” Another expert says,  “There are some cool things happening in grocery stores, many based on psychology, that have an impact on how and what people ...

Blame it on the farm animals.  Or the doctors who prescribe them for colds.  But antibiotics have been so overprescribed and used in this world that kids are now developing infections that can no longer be treated by these wonder drugs -- and wind them up in the hospital, or worse. According to newswise.com, studies have shown " Infections caused by a specific type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise in U.S. children," and this bacteria -- that is very hard to treat -- is showing up primarily in children ages one to five. “Some infections in children that have typically been treated with oral antibiotics in the past may now require hospitalization, treatment with intravenous drugs, or both, as there may not be an oral treatment option available,” the Web site quotes Dr. Latania K. Logan, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics and pediatric infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center. While the overall rate of...

I was shocked to see the kid sitting next to me at a recent event sipping from a cup of coffee . "You drink coffee?" I asked, stupidly. "Yeah, it keeps me awake," this boy said.  "Sometimes I fall asleep in school."  He added that, with all the stress from seventh grade, he needs the caffeine to keep on-track, and alert.    I was shocked.   Even though I'm the last living human never to have drunk a cup of coffee (my first taste was after crossing the English Channel after a night of seasickness so I suppose that's a reason why), I still find it incredible that kids have now discovered the stuff. According to The Mommy Files, kids are drinking less soda, which is good, but more coffee, which, not so much.   They're also guzzling energy drinks.  Starbucks' Frappucinos and Red Bull are very popular among the preteen and teen set. Of all the beverages kids drink today, coffee is the favored liquid, at 24% of total youth uptake, an ...

While we know way too many children and teens are killed by guns (last count: 11,000  people, many of them younger than 12, in 2013, according to Slate, which took up the accounting after Newtown), did you know that a lmost one child or teen an hour is injured by a firearm seriously enough to require hospitalization? Michelle Healy at USA Today reports that a new study shows that six percent of the 7,391 young hospitalizations analyzed resulted in a death, quoting February's  Pediatrics , released today. "Every day, 20 of our children are hospitalized for firearms injury, often suffering severe and costly injuries, clearly shows that this is a national public health problem," Robert Sege, director of the Division of Family and Child Advocacy at Boston Medical Center and a co-author of the study, tells Healy. I don't know about you but I have a horrifying thing to say.  I am becoming numb to all the mass murders and drive-by shootings of innocent children who ju...

It seems hard to believe (and sad), but maybe not so when I look at my couch-potato, computer-nerd son: our kids are less fit than we were when we were young. Remember running around your neighbors' yards with your friends, hiking in the woods behind your house, chasing the dog, and, in my neighborhood in the summer, not having to come home until you heard the fire station foghorn, marking 8 p.m.? Today's kids don't seem to have those kinds of pleasures.  Just about every play date when my son was little involved a car, and our busy road is too dangerous to ride a bike.  Sometimes we take a walk in nice weather but that's about all he really wants to do that's physical. (Of course, when a close friend lived nearby, they played soccer endlessly, but then Michael moved away.) A new study has found that, around the world, children don't run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were kids, and today's kids are about 15% less aerobically fit t...

So you thought the only reason to get your kids to bed early was some peace and quiet?  Guess again.  A new study has found that sleep -- or lack thereof -- is tied to obesity. Children who do not sleep enough may be increasing their risk for obesity, a story reported today in The New York Times. In the study children who slept more ate 134 calories fewer each day during the week they were tested than the week when they did not. Their weight averaged a half-pound less the week they slept the most. The bottom line?  Children who sleep more may see their appetites decrease, while, conversely, children who only get five or six hours of sleep a night may just want to eat more. It's also true of adults.  Studies have shown that it happens in adults, too. " Obesity develops when energy intake is greater than expenditure. Diet and physical activity play an important part in this, but an additional factor may be inadequate sleep," Dr Kristen Knutson, from the...

It's no surprise that fast food makers target their ads to kids.  We all know that.  But did you also know that  less than 1 percent of all fast food kids' meal combinations meet the recommended national nutrition standards?  And that only 3 percent of kids' meal combinations met standards set by the fast food industry itself for childhood nutrition? So reports dailyrx.com on a new study just out from Yale that found that kids see two to three fast food ads every day, and that's because in 2012 fast food advertising increased 8 percent from 2009. All in all, $4.6 billion was spent in advertising for fast food restaurants in 2012, according to the Web site. "For context, the biggest advertiser, McDonald’s, spent 2.7 times as much to advertise its products ($972 million) as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined ($367 million)," the report explained. dailyrx.com notes that, according to the study, the average US preschooler sa...

Can phys ed make our kids smarter?  Some say yes. According to smartplanet.com, "Researchers at the universities of Strathclyde and Dundee found an increase in performance for every 17 minutes boys exercised, and 12 minutes for girls,” the BBC reported , noting that,”children who carried out regular exercise not only did better academically at 11 but also at 13 and in their exams at 16, the study suggested.” “Physical activity is more than just important for your physical health," smartplanet.com quotes Dr. Josie Booth, a co-leader of the study. "There are other benefits and that is something that should be especially important to parents, policy-makers and people involved in education.” Gretchen Reynolds at the NYT agrees, reporting that "Children who are physically fit absorb and retain new information more effectively than children who are out of shape, a new study finds, raising timely questions about the wisdom of slashing physical education programs at...