A new national survey shows that there has been a sharp drop in children’s bullying in the last five years. Experts believe that anti-bullying programs are having an impact.

The study, published this week in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, showed that the percentage of children who reported being bullied went from 22 percent in 2003 to 15 percent in 2008. The percentage of kids reporting assault, even from a sibling, went from 45 percent to 38.4 percent.

In the study 2,030 children, ages 2 to 17, were interviewed in 2003, and in 2008 the same questions were asked to 4,046 subjects. 10 to 17 year olds were interviewed directly about forms of violence and victimization they experienced; for children under 10, their parents or primary caretakers were asked the questions.

Professor David Finkelhor, the lead author of the study, said he was encouraged by the data. “Bullying is the foundation on which a lot of subsequent aggressive behavior gets built.”

Anti-bullying programs received funding increases after the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado. One of the largest initiatives to date is the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program which is found in schools across the country. The program works to introduce changes in the school, in the community, with the individual, and in the classroom. Olweus helps establishe a bullying prevention coordinating committee, conducts committee and staff training, develops individual intervention plans for involved students, posts and involve school staff rules against bullying, develops partnership with community members to support the school’s programs and works on many other initiatives.

The study published this week showed that the biggest decline in bullying was found among children from low-income households. Marlene Snyder, director of development for Olweus, said that the findings are consistent with Olweus staff’s observations. Many of the grants to implement anti-bullying programs went to large inner-city schools where crimes were high and economic conditions low and Snyder said that, “When those communities have had the money, they could be successful.”

The new research didn’t address the bullying because of sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network said that this type of harassment hasn’t declined but remained the same between 2001 and 2007.

Source: Babble

New research suggests that even before they’re born, minority children face many obesity risks. One study concluded that cultural customs, beliefs and family income are all factors which contribute to obesity. The other study showed that obese children exhibit signs of inflammation at a very young age.The two studies were published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

In the first study, researchers looked at data from 16,000 children, ages 1 to 17, who had blood tests between 1999 and 2006. Inflammation markers were analyzed including a C-reactive protein, or CRP, which has been linked to heart disease in adults. High levels of CRP were found in children as young as 3 years old with even higher levels in black and Hispanic children.

Ashley Cockrell Skinner, the lead author in the study, said she was very surprised to find the markers in such young children. She stressed that it’s unlikely the high levels will cause problems at age 3. It’s unclear if lowering CRP levels at such a young age would make a difference.

The second study published in the Journal of Pediatrics analyzed racial disparity. Researchers spoke with 1,826 mothers in the Boston area. They looked at several factors: mothers pressuring children to eat more, mothers who smoked during pregnancy, allowing children to have sugary drinks, fast food and televisions in their rooms, rapid weight gain in very young infants, starting solid food before 4 months, and children sleeping less than 12 hours a day, between 6 months and 2 years.

Minorities were found at greater risk for all of these factors. Lead author of the study Dr. Elsie Taveras of Harvard Medical School explained that while some traits are common in low-income, less educated families, including whites, researchers accounted for it and still found that “race was a factor regardless of income.”

Taken together these studies can be useful if they become a starting point to help families and society prevent the behaviors that can cause obesity. This on-going battle needs to focus on the many factors which in fact contribute to the data highlighted in the study, and not stop at the immediate causes.

The research can be a good starting point to ask ourselves why we allow children to have sugary drinks or unhealthy food. As Madeline Holler pointed out here at Babble, personal responsibility is important, but a heavy advertising campaign that puts Barbie sugar filled cereal against carrots and celery is a tough one to win, even for determined parents.

Making good choices often depends on available alternatives. Until Dora decides to put a carrot in her backpack, or stick her face on a green bean frozen package, it may be an uphill battle.

Source: MSNBC

An Illinois court is weighing a divorce case in which the parents are at odds with their daughter’s religious upbringing. There is obviously a lack of consensus between the two, and the case raises the question of whether a court can make such a personal decision and essentially determine the child’s religious upbringing.

The case involves Joseph Reyes, an Afghanistan vet and law student, and Rebecca Shapiro. The couple married in 2004 and Reyes converted to Judaism. The couple had a daughter and when they divorced four years later, and Shapiro won primary custody of the couple’s 3 year-old daughter, Ela, with Reyes getting regular visitations.

Shapiro said that the couple had decided to raise the daughter Jewish, while Reyes said that he converted to Judaism under duress and that he now wishes to expose his daughter to his own religion, Catholicism. Reyes had his daughter baptized last November without Shapiro’s knowledge. When she found out, Shapiro reacted by obtaining a temporary restraining order prohibiting Joseph from “exposing Ela Reyes to any other religion other than the Jewish religion during his visitation.”

Reyes decided to fight his battle on camera and took his daughter to a Catholic mass, while being filmed by a television crew. Shapiro’s lawyer requested that Reyes be held in criminal content.

The headlines the case created have predictably oversimplified the case – a father is threatened with jail time for taking his girl to church? But the actual situation is more complicated. Shapiro argued that Ela will get confused by multiple religions, having been raised Jewish. Reyes said that under Illinois law a non custodial parent can attend religious functions if they are not harmful to the child. He also stated that the order violates his religious freedom.

In Newsweek, Dahlia Lithwick pointed out that, “A family-court judge infringes on your right to free speech when he bars you from speaking ill of your ex-husband in front on the kids. She can prevent you from interstate travel if you seek to move your child away from your ex.” The question is whether the court can extend this reasoning to Reyes’ actions of taking his daughter to church.

Does the court have standing to determine which religion Ela should be exposed to? is it a question of personal freedom?

The case is still in the courts, but as is so often the case in divorce, there is little hope of a resolution that satisfies all parties.

Source: ABC, Babble

I wrote this piece for Stroller Derby at babble.com and thought that the research presented was interesting.

Abstinence ed minus morals. It works. Or so a new study says. The research, released Monday in the February edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggests an abstinence-based approach can be successful.

The study was different than past abstinence only programs in that it avoided a moralistic tone, about the importance of saving sex for marriage, for example.

Instead, the approach was designed to help sixth and seventh graders better identify the drawbacks to sexual activity at their age. The students were asked, for instance, to list the pros and cons themselves, an exercise in which they saw the list of cons was far longer than the pros.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the study, the students were broken into four groups. One group received safe-sex classes, one got abstinence-only classes, one group received classes incorporating both approaches, and the fourth group had classes in just general health behavior. Researchers assessed success by the number of students who said they had had sex in the two years following the classes. About a third of the abstinence-only students said they had sex, but that compares to nearly half of the students in the other three classes.

The program, based on social psychology theory about what motivates behavior, encouraged abstinence as a way to prevent STDs and avoid pregnancy (though pregnancy and STD rates were not recorded). The approach was designed to be relatively focused on these issues.

The lead author of the study, John Jemmott III, is a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has worked extensively with efforts to reduce risky behavior among inner-city youths. He said the single focus may have made the difference, versus the other three approaches. “The message was not mixed with any other messages,” he said.

I don’t know what it’s like to be in anyone else’s shoes.

Walking my own path is difficult enough without trying to figure out what’s best for others. What I do know is that some of the hatred displayed on the internet especially in anonymous forums is disconcerting.

Rather than boycotting the web, I’ve decided to start my own fight the crap movement with a series of interviews with people from all walks of life.

I’m starting with Nadya Suleman, the controversial mother of fourteen whose story captured the internet, before Tiger Woods hijacked it all.

q. After giving birth to the octuplets there was so a lot of negative press. Some went as far as suggesting that you actually had the babies to gain media attention. What’s your response to this?

It’s ridiculous to suggest that I’d have eight children to get on television. Mine was a difficult and unexpected situation. I didn’t have the babies to get in the media spotlight, I had my children because I love them and I always wanted a large family. I adore kids, I have fourteen of them and love them beyond anything I could express in words. The media frenzy was a consequence, not something I had in mind when I wanted to expand my family.

q. Some of the controversy focused on your choice to have multiple children at once, and on the fact that you were a single mother already caring for six little ones.
a. I understood the criticism and where people were coming from, especially with some of the negative press and headlines. People don’t know me and go by a few titles they read on the news, so it’s easy to form incorrect opinions.
In terms of my decision, I wanted one more child, which wouldn’t have made a difference to me because I already had six. I didn’t start out wanting eight babies at once. I had six embryos available to me and I considered those my babies. I would have never destroyed them, but keeping embryos is difficult financially and emotionally. We went ahead and implanted the six embryos because of my history of the embryos not taking, so I never expected all of them to take. I had the option to abort them but I would have never done that. That’s how I found myself pregnant with multiples. It wasn’t planned, but it happened.

q. Did your background have a lot to do with your desire to have a large family?
a. It did in the sense that I was an only child and really wanted siblings growing up. I felt very lonely.

q. How was and is your relationship with your parents right now?
a. Growing up we didn’t have a lot of money. My father had some issues with addiction. I didn’t have the best relationship with my parents, but they tried. Right now, I’m working on my relationship with my mother. I believe it’s important to have grandma around for the children, have contact, have her involved. It’s not easy but I try hard.

q. Do you have particular religious or ethnic traditions you identify with?
a. I currently attend protestant church.

q. I’m not going to ask you which one, or photographers will flock to it. But what is it like to be a mom always in the spotlight, to have your every move followed, everything you do judged?
a. It can be tough. I know who I am behind the ‘octomom’ label. I can separate myself from this image. I’m not even angry or mad at people who have personally attacked me because I know who I am, what I’m about, how much I care for my children. I try to stay focused on the positive and avoid negativity. There were many things that were out there in the media that were completely incorrect which contributed to some of the anger people showed toward me. Everyone believed that I was taking government aid, that’s not true. I’m self supporting, I pay my bills and I work hard.

q. Pregnancy isn’t easy, and your body has been through a lot. Was recovering difficult for you and what helped?
a. Recovery was very smooth. I had a c-section and healed up quickly. I lost all of the weight and I attribute that to really good genes. I did have some issues afterward which were covered extensively in the news, but overall things went very well for me and for the babies.

q. Do you get time for yourself, for example to exercise?
a. I have very little time to myself, I focus on giving each child individual attention whenever I can. I’m almost always with one or two of the kids and really try to give the older ones time alone with mommy. I get to go to the gym in the middle of the night, I don’t sleep that much but I try to take naps whenever I can.

q. You’re a single mom with many little ones. Do you envision the babies’ father involved in their upbringing, or do you see yourself doing it alone?
a. I would love the father to take part, but I don’t believe he will. Initially, after the eight were born I tried, but it’s not happening, and it won’t happen in the near future

q. In what way do you think the media has been unfair to you or to your children?
Luckily, they haven’t been unfair to the kids. For me personally, I think that they painted me as someone who intentionally did this – had the octuplets – to gain media attention rather than someone who made a choice and then found herself at the center of media frenzy. It’s a difficult position because no matter what I do the media tries to spin it negatively. I support a large family completely on my own. I would be lambasted if I were on government dollars, and lambasted if I do a documentary about my life.

q. What would you like the public to know about you?
a. I’m a single mom who fully supports her family. I make choices, I learn, I make some mistakes, I make good decisions, and I move forward, like any other mom. I want to use whatever good or voice I have right now for something positive, for causes I believe in. I want to help with autism research and support. This is very close to my heart because one of my children has autism and I know how tough it can be on a parent. I’m involved with a program sponsored by UC Riverside called SEARCH which provide support and resources for families dealing with autism. I would like to do more in this field.

q. Do you have support and a sympathetic ear when you need something?
a. I have friends. In the last few months I’ve unfortunately discovered that many people want to get something out of the situation, so I have to be careful. A friend sold pictures of me pregnant and that was tough. But yes, I do have friends.

q. What are your future plans?
a. I don’t think past tomorrow! Right now I’m writing a memoir and have a great support system, great nannies and my attorney Jeffrey Czech. All these people have really helped me. And I don’t look at the internet or read the newspapers, I concentrate on my family and my work.

q. Everyone seems to be so focused on the difficult aspects of having many children at once. What are some of the positive aspects?
a. It’s great that my children grow up together and have each other in a way that I didn’t. It’s wonderful to see how they are attached to one another, to know that they will always have this strong bond. They learn to share more, learn to be helpful and there’s always so much going on, it’s so alive.
For me seeing all my babies develop together, laugh with each other, help each other out, it fills me with happiness. Life with many children can be challenging but the rewards are worth every minute of it.