Sometimes, making a mistake teaches an invaluable lesson.  And so it is with the loophole in Nebraska’s “safe haven” law, a statute that allows parents to drop off children at hospital emergency rooms if they are unable to care for them.  The trouble is, Nebraska lawmakers neglected to define “child.”  So far, 34 children, some of them as old as 17, have been dropped off, including two teenagers just last Thursday. 

A special legislative session is underway in Nebraska to fix the law.  While different bills have been offered, the legislature will probably end up defining a “child” as one year of age or under.

Fixing the safe haven law, however, won’t fix the problem that the mistake in Nebraska has uncovered.  Many parents there—and across the nation—feel utterly unable to parent effectively and are looking for a way out.

It would be easy to demonize parents who bring a 5 or 13 or 17-year-old son or daughter to the hospital and say goodbye, but I don’t presume that all or most of these parents are unfeeling monsters looking to shirk responsibility and lay it at the doorstep of government.  And even for the percentage of parents who are that disordered in their characters, I wouldn’t want their children to remain in their custody, anyhow.

The real problem isn’t the Nebraska loophole, it’s the lack of available guidance and services for parents who are dealing with children and adolescents more prone than ever to use alcohol and illicit drugs, fall victim to psychiatric disorders like Attention Deficit Disorder and Bipolar Disorder and even succumb to joining gangs (which are now invading the suburbs, not just confined to urban centers).   The story of a Florida man driving all the way to Nebraska to drop off his 11-year-old boy is a story of desperation, not depravity.

I’ve always believed that we end up paying exponentially, in the long run, for underestimating how many American families are in crisis, without parents who can properly direct, discipline and nurture their kids.  Now, we have a little window, thanks to Nebraska, on the intensity of the trouble in some families, though still no insight into the real number of such families.

What is called for is a system of graduated aid to families in psychological distress.  This has to begin with case finding—perhaps through the schools—and continue through a spectrum of services, including parenting courses, child counseling and medication clinics, respite services and, yes, beefed up options for good foster care and adoption.

Here’s something to think about:  I recently referred a Massachusetts girl to a local child psychiatrist for help with symptoms that were overwhelming her parents and her school system.  Until she used my name to move up on the waiting list, she was given an appointment four months down the road.  And that’s Massachusetts, comparatively rich in medical resources.  According to Time magazine, Nebraska has a grand total of six child psychiatrists in the entire state.

So many in Congress are all about bailing out the auto industry and the banking industry and the mortgage industry and maybe a few cities along the way, moves that will ultimately weaken the marrow of our economy, upon which rests the hope for renewed ideas and approaches to real economic growth.  Some of their energy would be better spent bailing out emotionally overwhelmed American families, upon whose children’s shoulders rests the future.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

Here in America, we’ve become a society so worried about skin cancer, that we’ve overlooked some of the good things that the sun provides for us. One of those things is an improvement in our mood. Another is Vitamin D. But Vitamin D is also obtainable through food including oily fish, eggs, fortified cereals, milk and orange juice. It can also be taken as a pill or liquid supplement.

Vitamin D works directly on the cells in the body, affecting metabolism the way a hormone dose. It is an extremely important vitamin, and we are finding out just how important with each new study. Deficiencies can lead to bone softening disease (rickets short term, or osteoporosis long term), dementia, heart disease, diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, some cancers, autoimmune diseases, and infections.

As we lather ourselves and our children with sunscreen, we increase our deficiencies. A recent study from Children’s Hospital in Boston revealed that 40% of infants were lacking in Vitamin D. Those especially affected had darker skin which interferes with absorption, or are from the Northeast, where there is less direct sunlight.

But the solution to the growing Vitamin D deficiency problem in our children is NOT to expose them to more sun. Supplying a liquid supplement by mouth is just too easy. The American Academy of Pediatrics has just wisely doubled the recommendation for infants and children to 400 IU daily. This amount is completely safe, and is the amount of Vitamin D found in a liter of infant formula.   

The problem, believe it or not, is worse for mothers who are breast feeding. When was the last time you heard a doctor say that breast milk was deficient in anything? The problem may come from mothers not having enough Vitamin D, which is then lacking in their breast milk. It may be easily correctable by administering supplements to breast-feeding mothers rather than their infants, but this has yet to be studied. In the meantime, the Boston study showed 10 times the amount of Vitamin D deficiencies in infants of breast feeding mothers as compared to those who used formula feeds. This is a huge discrepancy, especially when you consider how easy it is to supplement this essential vitamin.

So use sunscreen on your children’s skin, but at the same time consider giving them a daily drink of Vitamin D.

Dr. Marc Siegel is an internist and associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He is a FOX News Medical Contributor and writes a health column for LA Times, where he examines TV and movies for medical accuracy. Dr. Siegel is the author of “False Alarm: the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear” and “Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic”. Read more at www.doctorsiegel.com

Dr. Bassett

Allergy season in many areas of the US has had a big impact on all of allergy sufferers, particularly on children.  As children often spend a larger amount of time outdoors during the summertime they may be more so affected by the onslaught of daytime seasonal pollens and mold spores.  

 If one parent has allergies there is at least a 25 to 33 percent chance of the child developing allergies and the risk goes up over 50 to 75 percent if both parents are allergic sufferers.  So family history is a key factor in whether or not your children will develop seasonal allergies, indoor allergies and/or asthma.

 Recent studies have looked at impaired sleep as a result of poor breathing due to congested nasal and sinus passages during the night.  This may have a direct impact on daytime behavior and performance in the classroom.  Fatigue and daytime drowsiness may also be a sign of sleep disturbances that occur due to poorly controlled allergies.

Some suggestions I typically discuss with the parents of children suffering from seasonal allergies are:

  * Change clothes after spending time in the park where pollens are plentiful

  * Washing hair and taking a bath later in the day after being outside on a “high pollen day

  * Pre-treat to prevent daily symptoms during peak seasonal pollen periods

  * Vacation at peak allergy times by a body of water such as a lake, river or by the beach, where pollen levels are typically lower

* Ask your pediatrician or allergist if your child should be on “anti-inflammatory” nasal sprays to reduce congestion from seasonal allergies that may assist in better quality sleep at night

Be proactive and develop a sensible allergy management program for your child to successfully combat seasonal allergy triggers!  Learn more at www.acaai.org and www.aaaai.org.

 Dr. Clifford W. Bassett is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Long Island College Hospital and on the faculty of NYU School of Medicine.  He is the current vice chair for public education committee of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.  No information in this blog is intended to diagnose or treat any condition.

It’s one of the best and most honorable questions a man can ask: How do I talk to my child about sex?Fathers regularly ask me how they can get involved with sex education. They actually want to be that resource for their children, and they need to be; children want them to be.

But talking about sex isn’t always easy for parents. So how do you get started?

Quite frankly, a column can’t do this topic justice. So to start, moms and dads should read a great book on this topic, such as Debra Haffner’s “From Diapers to Dating.” But in a nutshell, parents need to do the following to create a supportive climate for their children to learn about sexuality.

When Wendy Dean suffered a heart attack, her personal health was not her only concern. Because she was only 35-years-old, she had good reason to worry about her two young daughters.So one year later, she decided to have the girls’ cholesterol levels tested.

“I took them because they were high risk,” said Dean, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. “I wondered about their cholesterol immediately.”

The results justified Dean’s concern: Her daughter Becca, who was 10, had a total cholesterol level of 213 mg/dL. Her other daughter, Sarah, 7, had a total cholesterol level of 187 mg/dL.

According to the American Heart Association’s Web site, the acceptable total cholesterol level for children ages 2 to 19 is 170 mg/dL or lower.

Parents don’t generally worry about their young children having heart attacks, but high cholesterol in children is actually very common. And if kids with high cholesterol do not change their lifestyles, they could be at risk for a host of problems later in life.

Illegal cheese being imported from Mexico has been blamed for sickening a number of Hispanic immigrants, including many children, in Southern California, ktla.com is reporting.

The unpasteurized cheese, which is tainted with a rare form of tuberculosis called Mycobacterium bovis, is common in Mexico and often made at home by immigrant families, health officials say.

Mycobacterium bovis is the bacteria responsible for causing TB in cattle and is related to M. tuberculosis, which causes TB in humans. Mycobacterium bovis is able to jump species and cause TB in humans. It causes less than 1 percent of tuberculosis cases in humans in the U.S., according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Symptoms of the disease include fever, night sweats, and weight loss. It is treated with a combination of antibiotics.

In San Diego County, the number of cases is on the rise among children who are believed to have consumed the tainted cheese, which is called queso fresco cheese or bathtub cheese, ktla is reporting.

I looked at that photograph and thought about how the sighting of that aircraft must have played in the psyches of the previously ‘uncontacted’ tribal members on the ground.  The first response was, clearly, fear and a corresponding commitment to protect themselves by force.  That’s an understandable reaction when the unknown presents itself as a flying machine disturbing the peace of the Amazonian sky.

It speaks to the inherent capacity of man to join together, create a community and protect it.  It shows the inherent bravery at the core of every great people—whether numbering 250 million or a thousand.  It means that we are related in our souls even to the most “primitive” men and women, because the highest attributes we possess are not expressed in the machines we create or the buildings we build, but the relationships we forge, the value we place on our “villages,” and the courage we can summon in the face of adversity.

Perhaps the villagers will prepare for war.  Perhaps they will pray for peace or for strength.  Perhaps a sense of wonder and possibility will mingle with their raw determination to survive.  Perhaps that hope for something miraculous from the sky will overtake their fears.  I pray that they will not interpret the machine in the sky as the beginning of Armageddon, as the final chapter of their existence—but we know that communities much closer to home have needlessly seen the end looming near.

I imagine they will hold their children closer or kiss them in their sleep or prepare for them an oral or written history of the great event that took place in their lives before they were old enough to record their own life stories.  Maybe those who rushed outside at the sound and then sight of the aircraft above will be remembered for generations to come as heroes.

The truth is we could share gifts with these Amazonian people.  We have learned so much about maintaining our health, journeying to frontiers of scientific and technical knowledge previously unthinkable, and expanding the range of human possibility in communication and travel. 

Yet we also should be careful to note—for them and for us—that some of our achievements have transported too many of us away from our connections with ourselves and one another, away from our connections to nature and away from our connections to God.  And reminders of these invaluable assets, inherent to man, may be among the gifts these Amazonian people can offer us.

Late tonight, when I arrive home to my family after a short trip, I will kiss my wife and son and daughter in their sleep and remind myself—in honor of the “uncontacted” men and women and children in the rainforest—that human beings are much more alike than different in what we need and what we can give, and often more afraid than we need to be.

Dr. Ablow is a FOX News psychiatry correspondent. Visit his Web site at www.livingthetruth.com.

Surprising research suggests that childhood cancer is most common in the Northeast, results that even caught experts off guard. But some specialists say it could just reflect differences in reporting.

The large government study is the first to find notable regional differences in pediatric cancer. Experts say it also provides important information to bolster smaller studies, confirming that cancer is rare in children, but also more common in older kids, especially among white boys.

The study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based on data representing 90 percent of the U.S. population. It found that cancer affects about 166 out of every million children, a number that shows just how rare childhood cancers are. (Continue)

The percentage of American children who are overweight or obese appears to have leveled off after a 25-year increase, according to new figures that seem to offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal battle.

“That is a first encouraging finding in what has been unremittingly bad news,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of an obesity clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston. “But it’s too soon to know if this really means we’re beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.”

The study, conducted by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, found that roughly 32 percent of children were overweight but not obese, 16 percent were obese and 11 percent were extremely obese.

The anguish of Hurricane Katrina should have ended for Gina Bouffanie and her daughter when they left their FEMA trailer. But with each hospital visit and each labored breath her child takes, the young mother fears it has just begun.

“It’s just the sickness. I can’t get rid of it. It just keeps coming back,” said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. “I’m just like, `Oh God, I wish like this would stop.’ If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn’t have stayed in the trailer for so long.”

The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device. (Continue)