Calla Zhou

 The apparent phenomenon of parents joining the ranks of Facebook to be in on their children’s lives (or perhaps just to be “in”), has been largely criticized by members of the tweenage/teenage Facebook community.

 
A website devoted to the cause, named ‘Oh Crap! My Parents Joined Facebook’, features parents in computer screenshots of embarrassing Facebook conversations courtesy of submissions from their children. A Youtube video called My Mom’s on Facebook, opening with “You used to be a special place for all my college friends/a sanctuary in cyberspace, but every love story ends/Why did you have to go and lose your exclusivity?/Now all my nightmares have come true…my mom just friended me!” as starting lyrics.

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On Wednesday, Reuters reported on a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that examined the possible reasons for the increase of the number of women giving birth by caesarean section. The 1 in 5 rate of women giving birth by c-section in the mid 1990s has risen to 1 in 3 as of 2008

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You may want to look at the packaging twice the next time you take out Over The Counter (OTC) medication for your child.

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“How many of you have to do chores now, or had chores when they were younger?” my teacher asked in discussion of a book the class was reading.

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 Reposted from theBeijinger forum:

 In the last month, two cases of Erlichia and one case of Babesia have been diagnosed. These are sub-tropical infections that should not be seen in Beijing. The most likely explanation is that with increased dog mobility, be it within China or from overseas, the parasite has been brought to Beijing's warmer summer climate in the last 2-3 months and is re-cycling through the tick population.

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Back to school.
 
This simple phrase will most likely trigger reactions in your teen. Some may be excited to escape the general sluggish atmosphere of summer break, while others are quite content to be living in the moment. I can say that I know as well as anyone the feeling of going back to school as a teenager. In a week, I’ll be heading back to perhaps the most demanding year of my high school career.

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These days, the Facebook Initiation looms over just about any middle schooler’s head. New students are ‘friended’ by the second day of class, friends met through summer camp are ‘added’ immediately after they return home; and friends introduce other friends to more friends through the far reaching hold of Facebook.

 I was assimilated into the craze back in ’07 when I entered a new middle school. As I neared a couple hundred friends in a few weeks, Facebook’s widespread grasp on my peers (and myself) was apparent. Pictures from “hang outs” and birthday parties were uploaded and ‘tagged’ that night for others to view and comment on. The inside jokes and memorable moments of the day were made personal statuses followed by a chain of other friends’ names who also in on the joke. Forgotten homework assignments were inquired about on other students’ ‘Walls’. Said Walls were seemingly preferred over Instant Messaging as friends chatted and posted messages in one minute intervals on each other’s pages. (I soon came to find out that the more posts on your Wall, the cooler you seemed). After a month of Facebook, I could hardly imagine my thirteen year old "social life" before I got an account.  

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So your child is young? He can’t sit still? Do adults call him immature? Your child might have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Or not.

 Last week, a Los Angeles Times article expressed doubt over the accuracy of diagnosed ADHD cases in young children. Research conducted by Michigan State University suggests that 1 million children in the United States could be misdiagnosed with ADHD. The study shows that a main cause for this is simply because of age. Younger children in the classroom tended to be more frequently labeled with ADHD.

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“Nothing is fun. I’m bored.”

“Mickey lies. Dreams don’t come true.”
 
“I can’t do Legos. I will never do Legos. I am not a Legos person. You should take them away.”
 
All of these statements came out of Kiran’s mouth before he was diagnosed with ‘preschool depression’, also called early on-set depression, at age five.
 
To many, depression at age five is shocking, but the concept of childhood depression is gradually becoming more widely accepted. Today, numerous child psychiatrists and developmental psychologists believe early on-set depression can even occur in two and three year olds. Child psychiatrist and epidemiologist Helen Egger of Duke University, child psychiatrist professor Joan Luby of Washington University School of Medicine who diagnosed Kiran, in addition to other researchers say 84,000 of 6 million preschoolers in America could be clinically depressed.

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Harvard Girl: Liu Yiting, Yale Girl and From Andover to Harvard are only a few of the “how I got my child into an Ivy League school” parenting books that have popped up around China in the last decade. In the first widely acclaimed of these guides, Harvard Girl: Liu Yiting, her parents describe that when Liu was a child, they would make her hold an ice cube for as long as she could to build stamina. Liu was also told to practice jumping rope until she won a competition at school as well as complete her elementary school work in the noisiest part of the house to develop concentration abilities. A storm of similar books followed, snatched up by parents who believed parenting techniques that worked for the parents of “successful” students might work for their own children.  
 
The one-sided knowledge of the aforementioned parenting tips (as well as Liu Yiting) has been ubiquitous in China ever since Harvard Girl was published in 2000. Until now.

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