New News for Spanking? Should You or Shouldn’t You?

Spanking is in the news again.   The old saying is if you spare the rod you’ll spoil the child. But a new study finds spanking a child may do more long-term harm than good.

The study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found a high percentage of American parents spank or slap their children. And it suggests children who are spanked, hit, or pushed as a means of discipline may be at an increased risk of mental problems in adulthood — from mood and anxiety disorders to drug and alcohol abuse.

It equates harsh physical punishment with increased mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse and dependence, severe personality disorders and even depression.  Individuals who are physically punished have an increased likelihood of having mental health disorders. Approximately 2% to 7% of mental disorders in the study were linked to physical punishment.

Some people might even say that spanking turns into abuse later in life.

Many parents don’t believe in it and feel that punishment is a “time out” or sitting in the corner that can do good – even taking away a Nintendo or PS3 or the TV is enough of a punishment for many children today. The reality is that many parents say they do and would use spanking as a form of discipline. So what is the right tactic?

Parents’ right to use physical punishment has been abolished in more than 30 nations, but not in the USA or Canada, says the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment, endorsed by the United Nations and others.

For the study, Afifi and colleagues analyzed data from a government survey of 35,000 non-institutionalized adults in the USA, collected between 2004 and 2005.

About 1,300 of the respondents, all over age 20, were considered to have experienced physical punishment as children. They reported that they had, sometimes or more often, been “pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit by your parents or any adult living in your house.”

But some family researchers argue that spanking, used properly, can be appropriate discipline.

I personally am a fan of not spanking and anyone who needs suggestions on more-effective methods of discipline to a primer on USNews.com called “3 Alternatives to Spanking That Work for Parents and Kids”:

• Focus on rewarding positive behavior rather than punishing bad deeds. Check out this video with Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Child Study Center, showing how to praise a child right with immediate, focused praise rather than the bland “good job!”
• Time-outs work, but they have to be done right to serve as effective punishment. A good time-out is short, focused and doesn’t involve lectures after the fact.
• Be consistent in how you discipline your children. This one’s tough for all parents — hey, we’re humans too! — but will go a long way toward making your home a haven rather than a battlefield.

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Pets and your Baby’s Risk of Having Allergies

I grew up with pets and I personally feel that it is important for children to have them. They help a child understand that they can’t control everything, they learn about unconditional love, how to care for something and how to be gentle with animals or there will be consequences. Now it looks as though there may be another reason to have a pet.

A new study published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy shows that having a dog or cat in the home during your child’s first year of life may help prevent pet allergies later in life. The study compared children who lived with indoor cats or dogs as infants to those in animal-free homes. The children who grew up with cats were roughly half as likely to be allergic to them as teenagers. However, growing up around a dog reduced the risk of dog allergies by about the same amount for boys, but not for girls — a finding that mystified researchers.

“This research provides further evidence that experiences in the first year of life are associated with health status later in life, and that early life pet exposure does not put most children at risk of being sensitized to these animals later in life,” says researcher Ganesa Wegienka, PhD, of the department of biostatistics and research epidemiology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Will having a pet prevents allergies?
For the study, researchers looked at the association between lifetime dog and cat exposure and allergic sensitization in a group of 566 boys and girls from Detroit who were followed from birth until age 18.

They found that being exposed dogs or cats at home during the first year of life was the most important factor in the reduced risk of allergic sensitization to that specific animal later in life. Being exposed to pets any time after the first year of life appeared to have no effect on allergy risk, however, which indicates that timing may be everything when it comes to preventing allergies.

Though they can’t say for sure, the researchers suspect that early exposure to pet allergens and pet-related bacteria strengthens the immune system, accustoms the body to allergens, and helps the child build up a natural immunity.

“Dirt is good,” says lead researcher Ganesa Wegienka, Ph.D., summing up the theory. “Your immune system, if it’s busy with exposures early on, stays away from the allergic immune profile.”

This isn’t the first study to find that having a household pet may protect kids from allergies, but it is the first to follow children until they were 18 years old.

Previous studies have had mixed results — some have even linked pet exposure during infancy to an increased risk of allergy — so it’s too early to recommend getting a dog or cat just to ward off allergies in your infant, says David Nash, M.D., clinical director of allergy and  immunology at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Although the researchers took into account whether the children’s parents were allergic to animals, they didn’t ask about a broader family history of allergies or other health problems. I could be that children who are genetically predisposed to animal allergies simply are less likely to grow up in homes with pets. The jury is still out. So don’t give you pet away if you’re concerned they will provoke allergies in your child as it may be that having a pet dog or cat around the house when your baby comes home is not a bad thing after all.

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Solid Foods Before Four Months in Formula-Fed Babies Raises Risk of Obesity?

Is breast best? I was just speaking with my good friend Megan yesterday about how long she plans on breast-feeding before she starts her twins on solid foods. She wasn’t sure, but knew she was surely going to start weaning in the next few months now that they are a little over 4 months old. New mothers are often faced with a dilemma about how long they should breastfeed their babies and when they can start their little ones on solid foods.

According to World Health Organization recommendations, babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months. In addition, the current US guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies should be fed solid foods after six months of age. But some argue that delaying the introduction of solid foods might actually promote unhealthful eating habits by preventing babies from developing tastes for such things as bitter foods (including leafy greens).

It was announced yesterday that the “AAP’s journal, Pediatrics has published the results of a research carried out by the Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard University scientists who found that babies who were fed solids before they turned four months old, are six times as likely to become obese, by the time they are 3 years old. This was seen in babies who were never breastfed or were weaned away before they completed four months. However, in children who were breastfed, the timing of introduction of solid foods had no effect on the obesity risk, at age three.”

In the study, researchers tracked 847 babies, 33% were on formula feeds while 67% were breastfed. Researchers collected and analyzed data about the timing of introduction of solid foods, height and weight for the three-year period, and measured fat on skin folds, to arrive at the results.

Why is this all so important? The study explains:
The researchers point out, “Our data suggest that increased adherence to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines has the potential to reduce the risk of obesity in children in the United States, given the relatively high prevalence of infants who are formula- fed or breastfed for less than 4 months. Approximately one-quarter of infants in the United States are never breastfed, and approximately half are breastfed for less than 4 months.”

What do you think about this study and do you think this study rings true with your children? Please share your experiences!

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