Blogging helps moms

Psychologists are now weighing in on this new craze of blogging. Some are even advising their patients to start blogging because they see the mental benefits. So the next time someone tells you to get off the computer, tell them it's part of therapy!

Here's portion of a CNN story about a mommy blogger:

Stacey Kim says blogging helps her cope with being a widow and a single mom to twins Riley, and Madeleine. Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn't she?

Overeating, alcoholism, depression -- name the problem and you'll find someone's personal blog on the subject. Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy. A 2005 survey by Digital Marketing Services for AOL.com a found nearly half of the 600 people polled derived therapeutic benefits from personal blogging.

For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience. "It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."

She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com. "Right after he died, people kept asking if I was in therapy," says Kim, "and I'd say, 'No, but I have a blog.'"

One Chicago licensed social worker and therapist in her 50s encourages patients to release bottled emotions through blogging. Leah, who asked that her last name not be used because of the nature of her profession, started EveryoneNeedsTherapy.blogspot.com to share professional insights. Soon, however, she was talking about her own feelings -- and her husband told her it seemed to lift her mood. "It's a form of group therapy," says Leah. "Not only can you express your feelings, but you can get comments, and that creates a dialogue."

I have never been a big computer person. I don't think I really knew what blogging was until a few months ago. This all started for me in January and it has been amazing. I do think it's therapeutic. I now have a journal of what is going on in my kid's lives and a great way to find the "parenting stories" that matter most to me.

Do you have a blog?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

How many hours of sleep do kids need?

Each Thursday we are answering questions from readers like you about getting your kids to sleep through the night.

Here's this week's question:

"I have older kids (not babies) but I still have questions. How much sleep does an early teen (ages 13-14) need? (I think they still need 9-10 hours but bedtime is getting harder to control as they get older). My son is a mouth breather, does that effect sleep?" ~Jennifer

Dr. Zallek says you are right about the number of hours a 13-14 year-old needs to sleep. She also mentioned parents have a tough time setting limits with kids this age. She thinks you are one step ahead because you realize your child may not be getting enough sleep. Dr. Zallek said, "Most parents don't recognize those are the sleep needs of their children. They expect their kids to sleep less and feel fully refreshed. " The main thing to keep in mind is to be adamant about making them go to bed on time. (Now you have back-up because a specialist is telling you to do this!)

Here's the breakdown on how many hours of sleep kids need:

Babies: 16-18 hours

Pre-school age children: 11-13 hours

School-aged children: 10-11 hours

10 year-olds: 10 hours

14 year-olds: About 9 hours, but some need a little more and some a little less

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) offers some tips to help your child sleep better:

• Follow a consistent bedtime routine. Set aside 10 to 30 minutes to get your child ready to go to sleep each night.
• Establish a relaxing setting at bedtime.
• Interact with your child at bedtime. Don’t let the TV, computer or video games take your place.
• Keep your children from TV programs, movies, and video games that are not right for their age.
• Do not let your child fall asleep while being held, rocked, fed a bottle, or while nursing.
• At bedtime, do not allow your child to have foods or drinks that contain caffeine. This includes chocolate and sodas.
• Try not to give him or her any medicine that has a stimulant at bedtime. This includes cough medicines and decongestants.

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Jennifer also mentioned her son is a mouth breather. Dr. Zallek said, "Mouth breathing can be a sign of a tendency of sleep apnea because of upper airway narrowing."

I will post all the information you need to know about childhood sleep apnea next Thursday.

Here are the links to the other sleep topics we have already covered:

"The Sleep Fairy" book for toddlers

The new baby can lead to sleep problems in older kids

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Adoptees more likely to be troubled

This story from TIME makes me so mad! It is about one of my passions, adoption. There's nothing wrong factually with the story(as far as I know), I just don't like to read anything negative about the subject because I know several families who have adopted domestically and internationally who have had wonderful experiences.

A new study shows being adopted approximately doubles the odds of an adolescent being diagnosed with a behavior or emotional problem. Furthermore, the findings open up the question of what's behind that increased risk — adoptive parents or genetics?

Americans adopt about 120,000 children each year, and the vast majority grows up happy and healthy. Yet researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that a small minority of those kids — about 14 percent — are diagnosed with a behavioral disorder or have contact with a mental health professional as adolescents, or about twice the odds that non-adopted teens face. "Despite the popularity of adoption, there is persistent concern that adopted children may be at a heightened risk for mental health or adjustment problems," the study's authors write in a report released this week.

That's in line with what previous adoption research has said for many years. What this new study challenges are the reasons behind this phenomenon. In the past, most researchers have dismissed the adoptees' disproportionate number of behavioral or mental health problems as a result of adoptive parents' demographic trends. That is, since people who adopt tend to be wealthier and more educated, they are likelier to access psychiatric care if their kids exhibit symptoms of, say, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Also, through the adoption process, these parents are generally more familiar with mental health services than non-adoptive parents. Yet after studying more than a thousand children, both adopted and not, Margaret Keyes warns that assumption may be flawed. The Minnesota psychologist and her colleagues found that disparity could be due as often to innate factors such as perinatal care or his birth parents' genes. "The deleterious effects may quite possibly have come before the adoption ever took place," Keyes, the study's lead researcher, says.

Another surprising conclusion that the Minnesota study produced was the fact that children adopted from within the U.S. are more prone to behavioral disorders than those adopted from overseas. Some 40,000 children worldwide annually emigrate from more than 100 countries through adoption, a trend increasing rapidly in the U.S. since the 1970s. But these foreign adoptees are far more likely to internalize their problems, suffering more commonly from depression or separation anxiety disorders. Domestic adoptees, on the other hand, tend to act out.

While consistent with adolescents studied in both North America and Western Europe, Keyes says, this finding "goes against preconceived notions that kids from foreign cultures would have a harder time adapting to new families."

Despite her study's findings, Keyes is quick to stress that there is nothing in them that should discourage parents from adopting. "Males are likelier to have behavior issues," she says. "But no one is overly concerned about having boys." Still, Keyes advises adoptive parents to be on the lookout for problem behaviors and to rely on the network of mental health providers they built up when applying to adopt their children in the first place.

Adoption is a wonderful thing. I am so blessed to know so many people who have helped kids. I do hope this research won't make someone decide not to adopt.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Hours of Education

I am wondering how many hours a day your kids spend in school. We have been running a story on WHOI about a local school district that is cutting out 45 minutes of class time a day. School will start at 9:15am and end at 3:00p.m. next year. My son is still in preschool, so I am not familiar with the "normal" school hours, but I think I had to be at school by 7:45 a.m. and got out at 2:15p.m. I think 6 1/2 hours is a normal school day??

What are your thoughts about changing the school day to 5 hrs and 45 minutes? Will giving teachers more time to prepare for classes lead to better grades or will kids be spelling like this picture?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

More Benefits of Breastfeeding

Here's the latest from ABC:

"Could breastfeeding babies help their mental development? A new study on 14,000 Belarusian children suggests the answer could be yes. Half of the mothers in the study were encouraged to breastfeed, while the other half received no special encouragement.

Follow up tests on the children at 6 years showed the breastfed group averaged about six points higher in IQ. However, the pediatricians performing the IQ tests knew ahead of time which children were breastfed, a potential source of bias. When a subset of kids was tested independently, the difference in IQ was just 3 points in favor of the breastfed children.

Doctors say this improved mental function, on top of boosting immunity and reducing allergy risk, is just one more good reason to breastfeed. But skeptics still question whether the IQ difference is real - or even whether it matters much. Evaluations from the children's teachers showed both group performed slightly above grade level in reading, writing and arithmetic - no matter how they were fed as infants. "

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Tracking kids' grades on-line

Should we as parents be able to have access to every score our kids get at school?

This is an ABC story we ran today on WHOI:

"Thanks to the Internet, more and more schools are giving parents online access to their children's grades. Now moms and dads can go online and see everything from homework assignments to class participation every single day.

The online grade system also allows parents to track class rank and watch grades rise and fall.
Parents can even opt to get updates on their cell phones. While some parents feel it's a great resource to help keep track of their child's progress, experts caution that it should not be a substitute for understanding how hard a child is working.

One parent said, "I can go on on a daily basis, which I do, and see in a real time
fashion what is going on were they in class number one, did the homework go
from backpack to teacher's hand? it's about accountability for me."

Professor Elisabeth Guthrie said, "Using email to track your child's daily progress in school undermines the kind of trust a parent really needs to have with their child."

Thousands of students agree with Professor Guthrie and have started using outlets like Facebook to voice their frustrations."

Your child's school has to participate with the the online program Parent Connect in order for you to see the grades. I am sure other similar programs either exist now or will soon.

I didn't realize parents could do this. For young kids, I think it would be great, but I don't know about everyday. I would think the teachers wouldn't have time to do that and shouldn't take time away from teaching to write something about every student everyday. However, the Internet is making things easier. I would be a little irritated as a teenager if my parents jumped down my throat every time I did something that was unsatisfactory. At that age, I think kids need to learn how to handle their own problems.

What do you think?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Kindergarten Requirements

A newsanchormom.com reader emailed me because she feels kindergarten requirements need to be changed.

She wrote, “More and more children are involved in pre-school education and are prepared to begin working at a different level when they begin school. I think it would be an interesting inquiry as to what has really changed in terms of kindergarten curriculum to recognize the fact that many children are better prepared upon entry. My first child began kindergarten in 1999. I am betting not much has changed in that time to up the standards."


This sounds like a valid point to me, but I was surprised to learn the opposite seems to be true.
Kids now are learning more than ever before. Kindergartners are learning what we did in first grade and some parents are worried their kids might be learning too much.

Here's the story that ran on WHOI-TV:

The Pearson's have seen the changes made to early education first hand. They have 6 children.Five-year-old Deven is in kindergarten at Valeska Hinton in Peoria. His older sister Nikia was in the first kindergarten class at Valeska in 1993. I asked Nikia, "What do you think about Deven learning now what you were learning in first grade?” She said, “I'm still smarter than him. I still remember things about Valeska. going back, it's interesting to see how stuffs has stayed the same and how it has changed."

Former kindergarten teacher now literacy specialist Beth Crider-Olcott has seen a lot of changes in the curriculum. She taught Nikia in kindergarten and is now the reading specialist for Deven.

Beth said, "Kindergarten when I was a child was 1/2 day, the letter people, graham crackers, milk and recess. Kindergarten today is full day-more than likely. It's demanding, rigorous academics in the morning,then all those traditional things sprinkled throughout."

One of the major differences deals with social issues, reading and writing and computer work. Those used to be things that were taught to kindergartners. Now five-year-olds have the basic concepts like listening to the teacher and logging on to the Internet before the first day.
Deven and Nikia's mom Janice said, "When I was in kindergarten, you learned how to tie your shoes. Now you know that going in."

So what should we be doing as parents to ensure our children are successful in school?

1. Get your kids to talk about school.

Beth said, "When you ask what happened at school today and the answer is noth'in, change the question. Ask them what they did during math time or what they did at recess. Don't give up."

2. Make sure the conversations about school aren't just you asking questions.
Beth said, "We say in early childhood have a conversation that takes five turns, where you talk, your child talks, you talk, your child talks and you talk. Do that 3 times a day. It grows the vocabulary."
3. Most importantly, read to your children daily.
Beth said, "Reading books with your child teaches them how books work. It teaches them school talk and reading books with your child grows vocabulary like nothing else."

The Pearson's have taken Mrs. Crider-Olcott's advice and they feel like it has paid off. Nikia is the senior class president at Woodruff High School, Jamara is in the gifted program at Washington and Deven is already reading. From parents to teachers and former students, they all say the new 70 plus learning standards can be good *and* bad.

Mary Ann Randle is the Family, childhood and Community Programs Director of for District 150.She says other schools in the district are modeling after Valeska Hinton's school plan because it allows kids to meet the requirements, but still sprinkles in some free time for kids to explore and learn to socialize.

Mary Ann said, "There's only 6 1/2 hours in the day. You have to really think about how you're doing to use that time. In some of our schools we have mandates we must fulfill."

After hearing this story, you might be surprised to find out there are still schools in the area that only offer half-day kindergarten. Dunlap is one of them. It is one of the best performing school district's in the state. Some Dunlap parents have asked to extend it to full day. Others are adamantly opposed to full-day. It will be interesting to see if full-day kindergarten becomes a state mandate at some point.

Did your kids have full day or half day kindergarten? What are your thoughts?

-NewsAnchorMomJen