DISCLAIMER: On this page, we provide answers to questions from visitors to this site which may be of interest to others, but we cannot provide advice about specific children. If you have a question about a specific child you should consult your family doctor.
Questions from visitors to this site
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (8 May, 2002) showed that infants who are breast-fed for up to nine months grow up to be smarter. Children who were breast-fed scored significantly higher than bottle fed children on the Wechsler IQ scale, a standard IQ test used in children.
Researchers in Copenhagen studied more than 3,000 young men and women and found that breast-feeding not only makes children healthier but smarter too.
There are three possible explanations for this finding:
Conclusion: Breast-feeding is one of the most important things a mother can do for a child.
Source: Mortensen, EL; Michaelsen, KF, Sanders, SA; Reinisch, JM. The Association Between Duration of Breastfeeding and Adult Intelligence. JAMA 2002; 287(18): 2365-2371
According to a (US) Consumer Products Safety Commission report (23 June 1994), baby walkers cause more injuries per year than any other product sold for use by children. These injuries include fractures, burns, head injuries, entrapment of fingers, amputations, dental injuries, and at least 11 deaths. As if that were not enough, it has now been shown that they delay mental and motor development.
Paediatricians in America assessed the mental and motor development of 56 infants who used walkers and 53 control infants.
Babys who used walkers sat, crawled, and walked later than those who didn't, and they also scored lower on the Bayley Scales of Mental and Motor Development (a standard measure used in the USA).
Conclusion: Baby Walkers are dangerous.
Fact: In 1992, The American Academy of Pediatrics and other consumer-oriented organisations filed a petition with the Consumer Products Safety Commission asking that baby walkers be banned.
Source: Siegel AC, Burton RV. Effects of baby walkers on motor and mental development in human infants. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 1999; 20: 355-361.
Head banging, the rhythmic banging of the head against a solid surface such as a mattress, cot-side, or wall, is common in young children. It usually occurs when a child is tired, such as bedtime, and lasts for just a few minutes. It is a worrying problem for parents, but it does not lead to any damage to the child.
Banging occurs in as many as 19 of every 100 children, and most children grow out of it by their third birthday. It is three times commoner in boys than in girls.
It is not an indication of physical illness, emotional illness, brain damage, or a developmental problem. It often occurs during a temper tantrum, or it may be a way of relieving pain such as the pain of an ear infection or teething.
It does not lead to brain damage or brain injury. But, it may lead to a callus, a bony bump on the head.
As a parent, you need to do five things:
The ongoing management of ADHD requires discussion and cooperation between the parents, the teacher(s), and the doctor. If the child does not improve then several possibilities must be considered:
In this case, the child is taking Adderall, a stimulant, and Zoloft, an antidepressant, and this combination of medications is widely used. We don't know the child's age or the dose of medication, but parents should proceed as follows:
It is fairly common for parents to disagree about the most effective treatment for ADHD, and for several reasons.
The fact that a speech language pathologist is involved in your child's treatment suggests that there is a language disorder in addition to ADHD. Specific learning disorders, such as language disorders, occur more frequently in children with ADHD than in other children, so this is not unexpected. However, fighting with siblings and friends, talking about dying, and wishing to die do not occur in most children with ADHD. These behaviours indicate a more serious problem.
One possibility is that your children are not doing well at school, either academically or socially, because of their ADHD, and are being teased by other children. This can be a problem in any child, but is compounded by a child's inability to express his feelings verbally, due to a language disorder. This leads to frustration, further teasing, anger, fighting, depression, and further teasing.
You should discuss these problems with your family doctor, and ask for a referral to a child psychologist or a child psychiatrist.
Several Books about ADHD written for parents and teachers are listed on the ADHD web page. Here are several more books that are helpful to any parent. These books talk about "difficult" children, not just ADHD.
Delayed speech development is a common presenting symptom in young children with autism. Some of these children don't acquire fluent speech, but many do. There are many people with autism whose language development was severly delayed but who developed useful speech later on. So keep working with your son.
The gluten-free, casein-free diet is fairly popular among parents of children with autism, and quite a few parents have reported that their children improved when given this diet.
The rationale for this diet is that in some children with autism, certain proteins (especially casein, from milk, and gluten, from wheat and other cereals) are not properly digested, and that large molecules, called peptides, enter the bloodstream where they have a deeterious effect on the brain. Some believe that eating a gluten and casein free diet might then result in improvement.
This idea has not received adequate research, so how useful the diet really is, is unknown. Parents who wish to try this diet should consult a nutritionist or dietician.
The behaviours you describe are not normal for a three year-old child. Normal three year-olds play with other children, make eye contact, speak clearly, have a vocabulary of several hundred words, love to play ball, are VERY interested in the world around them, and show affection.
How you get your sister to realise this, I don't know. Perhaps she already knows that something is wrong but is not ready to accept it.