Coping with your less-than-ideal family during the season of thanks and joy           0 inShare   Published on November 18, 2013   It’s not even Thanksgiving, but Christmas is everywhere in New York City, as it has been since the day after Halloween.  I no longer dread the holidays the way I once did but the idealized image —of that big, happy, smiling family—still eludes me, as it did during my childhood and later.  For unloved daughters and sons, the stress of the holidays sweeps in much more than the nuisance of crowded stores, piped-in joys, worries about money or pleasing everyone with the right gift.…

CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY                  It is generally held that the offspring of parents with bipolar disorder (BD) are at risk for BD. The degree of risk is an important question for both clinicians and parents. A recent study of bipolar offspring by Birmaher and colleagues1 sheds light on this issue. These authors compared the lifetime prevalence of bipolar and other psychiatric disorders in children whose parents had–or did not have–BD. The study involved 233 parents with BD and their 388 offspring and a control group of 143 parents without BD and their 251 offspring. Parents with BD were recruited from outpatient clinics…

    Facts for Families   Starting school is a major milestone for children and parents. School is a place away from home where a child will have some of his greatest challenges, successes, failures, and embarrassments. Because school is beyond the control of parents, it can be stressful for both the child and the parents. At school, a child will learn about how the world works, about appropriate social interactions, and about people outside his family. He will learn about himself, his strengths, weaknesses, interests, and who he is socially. He will have to perform in a way that he never has had to at home. He has to…

Field Guide to Families Nurturing strong relationships—one issue at a timeby Lynne Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. Something for every reader in your family     Published on June 25, 2012 by Lynne Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. in Field Guide to Families Nothing says summer like a day at the beach with a tote full of books. Check out the picks I shared on Boston’s Fox Morning News for great escapes through reading. The list has something for everyone in your family.  

Custody Disputes; The Role of the Child Psychiatrist Child psychiatrists may become involved in child custody disputes. When parents divorce and are unable to agree on custody of their children, they proceed to court to have a judge determine custody and visitation rights. Parents can become quite angry, and custody disputes often seem more like a battle than a court proceeding. Because of these dynamics, child psychiatrists are frequently loath to become involved in child custody disputes

More than half said they’d consider being a stay-at-home dad if financially feasible   Most working fathers say they want to share child-raising duties equally with their spouse/partner, but a lot of them admit that they aren’t actually doing so, a new survey shows.  The findings suggest that many dads are conflicted about finding a work-family balance, according to researchers at the Boston College Center for Work & Family.  Fathers who spend more time with their children had more confidence as parents, but only one in 20 took more than two weeks off work after their child was born, the results indicated.  Most fathers also said that a supportive work…

Finding helps explain why some kids more apt to develop asthma, other diseases, study says Women who smoke during pregnancy may be putting their unborn children at increased risk for a DNA change, a new study suggests. The change, called DNA methylation, can change a gene’s usual function. The researchers argue that the altered genes, which can be passed from parent to child, may explain why some children are more likely than others to develop certain diseases, such as childhood asthma. The study, which was to be presented Wednesday at an American Thoracic Society conference in Denver, analyzed questionnaires completed by the mothers and grandmothers of 173 children that assessed…

  Close your eyes for a moment, open your treasure trove of memories and take a step back in time to your childhood. Do you remember your grandfather gently scooping you up into his warm and comforting embrace? Or sitting by your grandmother’s side as she lovingly baked pies chock full of delicious, juicy warm apples sprinkled with crumbly cinnamon bits? The bond between grandparents and their grandchildren seems to be a magical one, and now, a new article published in the April issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sets out to discover why grandparents and their grandchildren share such strong…

  The best teacher for a young mother is her baby, contend experts who train social workers to interact with first-time moms. “We like to think of babies as ‘ordinary miracles,'” said Victor Bernstein, a research associate at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. But adjusting to a baby can take work, and the task of social workers often is to help young mothers learn to focus on an infant’s needs, say Bernstein and other SSA experts. “Mothers are not only important to their kids, but kids are really important to their mothers,” Bernstein said.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 – As more states consider universal preschool programs, a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar suggests that two years of pre-K is beneficial – although more time should be spent on teaching certain skills. In the current issue of the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Lori Skibbe and colleagues argue that pre-K programs generally do a good job of teaching literacy and that two years of preschool is better than one.