Pandemic Kids Use Screens 8 Hours a Day, Excluding School
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The Best Data Yet to Suggest that Screen Time Hurts Kids' Development
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A study shows that screen time earlier in life is linked to poorer developmental scores later on. Uh-oh.
Read MoreA Link Between Ultrasound and Autism? Doubtful.
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Many outlets are reporting that a study links prenatal ultrasound with autism spectrum disorder - in fact the study shows just the opposite.
Read MoreEarly Puberty in Girls Linked with Depression / Antisocial Behavior in Adulthood
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A new study appearing in the journal Pediatrics now suggests that early puberty in girls can lead to depression and antisocial behavior well into adulthood, suggesting that the difficulties of those teenage years are far from fleeting.
Read MoreMusic Therapy For Autism Spectrum Disorder: Disappointing News
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A study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that improvisational music therapy did not improve outcomes in kids with autism. But was it the intervention that didn't work, or the trial itself? For the video version, click here.
Read MoreBreastfeeding Doesn't Make Your Kid Smart. You do.
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Breastfeeding is associated with many benefits, ranging from the economic to the developmental. But association isn't causation, and touting the myriad benefits of breastfeeding may leave some women who are unable to breastfeed feeling less-than. Now an article appearing in the journal Pediatrics demonstrates, through careful matching, that breastfeeding itself likely has no effect on infant development. For the video version, click here.
Read MoreWhen It Comes to BMI, there are Four Types of Children in the World
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A study appearing in the journal Pediatrics has identified four "BMI Trajectories" that kids in the UK seem to follow. But how do these trajectories affect their psychosocial development? For the video version, click here.
Read MoreDo Smarter Babies Walk Earlier?
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Do you remember when your little baby took her first step? How about when she sat without support? How about standing with assistance? Yes, for many of us these "milestones" are not exactly burned in our brain, but a new study from the journal Pediatrics suggests that some of these milestones may be really important – not just for baby journals, but for childhood development. For the video version of this post, click here.
Here’s the deal. We've known for a long time that kids with severe developmental disabilities in childhood seem to meet some gross motor milestones later than expected. But that's looking at an extreme case. The question these researchers had was whether delayed gross motor development would associate with later childhood development in kids without developmental delay.
To answer this question, they turned to the Upstate KIDS study, a prospective cohort study of over 6000 babies born in the New York area. The study focuses only on 501 of the children though – a subset who agreed to a follow-up examination at 4 years. So, if you’re keeping score, we’re already looking at a group that is not representative of the population at large.
Based on logs the mothers kept, the researchers looked at when the child achieved certain gross motor milestones like walking. They looked at 6 milestones in all, and compared them to the total developmental score at four years of age. The findings were… subtle.
After adjustment for factors like maternal age, prematurity, and others, there was a statistically significant association between one of the six milestones - later standing-with-assistance and total developmental score. That total score is driven by 5 subcomponents, and when those were analyzed individually, later standing with assistance was associated with worse adaptive and cognitive development.
Similar results were seen in the subset of kids with no developmental disability – the subset, which, speaking editorially here, really should have formed the primary analysis of this study.
So… ok… should we panic if our kids aren't standing and walking like a bunch of little Rory Calhoun's? I'm not ready for that yet. For one, the authors don't appear to have accounted for the multiple comparisons evaluated here – so the marginally statistically significant result has a pretty high risk of being a false-positive. Second, it's not immediately obvious what you would do with a kid who stands with assistance 2.1 months later than the average. Stand them up more? Send them to a neurologist?
In the end, we’d end up giving moms and dads just one more metric to worry about in a world obsessed with measuring kids' performance at every turn. Or every step.