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Even moving up can harm your kids. According to a new study , students experiencing at least one move over a twelve-month period have a roughly 50 percent decreased likelihood of obtaining a high school diploma by age 25. And it's true whether you make a cross-town move or one to a more affluent area. "Our findings support prior research that demonstrates the strain mobility places on academic attainment after accounting for other academic risk factors,” says lead author Molly Metzger , PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, at newswise.com. “Evidence suggests that mobility in adolescence hampers chances of high school graduation regardless of whether youth move to a relatively poorer or less-poor neighborhood." As part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative survey that followed seventh- to 12th-graders in the mid-1990s into their young-adult years, researchers aske...

I was never very popular. For a short time I got to sit at the “it” table in high school and then I didn't. But it was only years later, when rereading (for some reason) the class president's entry in my yearbook, realizing that he had always liked me (he liked me, he really liked me! OK, so I'm no Sally Field). But popular I was not. Now a new study has just come out that says that if you're hot when you're 13, you're probably not, 10 years later. I'm not quite sure that's true. I know a lot of popular people from my high school who went on to become huge successes – a girl from my creative writing class who everybody fought to sit next to since first grade is now a veterinarian, and a boy, an incredible hunk, is a cowboy, riding herd in the Southwest (really). The New York Times quotes an expert as saying that, as fast-moving middle-schoolers, these kids are driven by a heightened longing to impress friends. And that, they...

So you don't let your kids drink Coke at home or eat Ho-Hos or Twinkies, but guess what?  They're exposed to these and other commercial brands every day at school. According to newswise.com, " Most students in elementary, middle and high schools are exposed to food commercialism (including exclusive beverage contracts and the associated incentives, profits and advertising) at school." Schools are desirable marketing areas for food and beverage companies, although many of the products marketed to students are nutritionally poor, a new study reports. The study found that, in  2012, 2.9 percent of elementary school students attended schools with  exclusive beverage contracts (EBCs), incentive programs,  compared with 10.2 percent in 2007; 49.5 percent of middle school and 69.8 percent of high school students attended schools with EBCs in 2012 compared with rates of 67.4 percent and 74.5 percent, respectively, in 2007. For food vending, 24.5 percent of middle scho...

At first I was furious.  PBS opens its special on rampage killers with a source placing possible blame on distant mothers.  Then the series broadened its investigation into mass murderers who were bullied as kids, didn't fit in, yet who, poignantly, longed to be accepted. And to be known. What I found truly disturbing were the mug shots of young killers.  Their eyes were all like Adam Lanza's, bizarrely wide-open and staring. According to the show, the majority of young rampage killers kill themselves. But not before, as in some cases, like Columbine, recording their profound depression and wish to die.  Are these kids we can save?  No one knows.  But the brains of people who are depressed do show physical differences, Miles O'Brien reported in the PBS special.  Researchers use a test that asks participants to identify colors on the screen when they don't match the words.  For example, the word "red" may appear in bl...