by Claire McCarthy on November 1, 2011
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Have you heard about Thylane Blondeau, the 10-year-old model who caused such a stir this summer with her pictures in French Vogue?
In the pictures, she is made up to the hilt, in provocative poses, vamping for the camera. It caused outrage in the media and blogosphere, with people saying that it is wrong for a child to be so sexualized.
I showed the video to my 10-year-old daughter to get her reaction. “That’s horrible,” she said. When I asked her why, she said it was because Thylane was dressed like a grown-up. The clothing and the makeup she was wearing in the pictures were not okay, according to Natasha. “She’s only ten!” she said.
(Click here to see an ABC News clip on the shoot.)
Well, okay then. This is so wrong that even a 10-year-old sees it immediately. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on August 26, 2011
When a child suffers from nutrition related health problems, it can cause a good deal of emotional and financial strain on her family. Obesity-related medical conditions like diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure and cholesterol often lead to pricey medications and doctor visits, and are sometimes tied to emotional issues that can be costly to treat.
On the flip side, eating disorders can have a devastating affect on a person’s health and usually take years of regular therapy to treat successfully.
Treating these conditions in a single child is expensive; when you add together the cumulative costs of treating them on national level, the numbers are astronomical. But researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have found that a fairly inexpensive health promotion initiative could reduce both obesity and bulimia nervosa in adolescents, potentially saving millions in would-be healthcare costs.
Their study, recently published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, shows that by adopting an educational initiative called Planet Health, five Boston area schools successfully reduced the prevalence of obesity and behaviors linked to bulimia. If these Boston schools are any indication, a nationwide adoption of the program could lead to less obesity and eating disorders on a national level, thereby saving millions in healthcare dollars usually allotted to treating these conditions. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on August 25, 2011
Have you heard about the new kids’ book, “Maggie Goes on a Diet”? It’s basically a retelling of the age-old ugly ducking fable, but with a modern twist. In this reenactment, the duckling is a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet, and with a little hard work goes from being an overweight, self-conscious kid to a star soccer player and the most popular girl in school.
The book may stress the importance of healthful eating and exercise, but many people are finding fault with the author’s emphasis on the thin = happy storyline, instead of focusing on the importance of health.
Among the critics is our own Dr. Claire, who was on New England Cable News this morning to talk about Maggie, childhood obesity and how to send kids the right message about health and weight.
Full story »
by Andrea Mooney on August 3, 2011
Tragic stories of teens being bullied and ostracized at school have been saturating media headlines. But while these tales are making news, there’s another story to be told: that of homosexual teens’ estrangement—even banishment—from their families.
According to the recent Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS), one in four teens who identify themselves as lesbian or gay are homeless, and a study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) says that it’s more likely that these teens are being driven out of their homes by their parents. Supporting this are findings from studies of homeless youth living apart from their families. One such study shows that 73 percent of homeless gay and lesbian teens indicated that they were homeless because their parents disapproved of their sexual orientation. Full story »
by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on July 20, 2011
In the following blog, a teenager who has overcome an eating disorder reflects on what she wishes more parents knew about the condition. For more information visit Children’s Center for Young Women website, or this parent’s guide to eating disorders.
It was never about weight. I just wanted to feel like I had some control.
I never thought I was fat. In fact, I liked the way I looked before I developed an eating disorder and liked my body less and less as I continued to lose weight. What a lot of people, including my parents, didn’t understand is that an eating disorder functions as a coping mechanism for other problems in someone’s life.
As I met more people who suffered from eating disorders, I realized that many of us had something in common. Many felt some sort of loss of control in their life and had used their eating disorder as a reaction or way to deal with it. Although for some people bad body image did play a large role in what started their eating disorder, for a lot of people it was the feeling of losing control in their life that they discovered was the initial cause of their eating disorder.
People with anorexia nervosa feel like they are able to gain control through extreme dieting and strict rules around food. They control what they eat, and eventually the shape and size of their body. Although it is an unhealthy coping mechanism, the eating disorder gives them a sense of relief that there is one thing in their life they can completely control without anyone else being able to have an influence. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on July 6, 2011
The suburb of Wayland, MA, was stripped of its quiet, small town image this week when an 18-year-old resident was found violently murdered in a local marsh. The suspected killer is another 18-year-old Wayland resident, and the victim’s former boyfriend.
“I did know [the victim] and the alleged assailant, and people are very, very sad and confused,” Wayland High Principal Pat Tutwiler told the Boston Herald. “I would say that there’s no such thing as a community where things like this don’t happen.”
Unfortunately, Principal Tutwiler’s quote is frighteningly accurate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every ten teenagers has experienced some form of dating violence.
With such high incidence of dating violence among young people, it’s very possible your child or someone they know is in an unhealthy relationship. To help keep teens safe, here are some important dating violence safety tips and facts for parents and teenagers from the Massachusetts Medical Society and Children’s Hospital Boston’s Center for Young Women’s Health. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on April 29, 2011
Many young people learn about sex online. How accurate is the info they're receiving?
Some Massachusetts representatives are expressing outrage over mariatalks.com, a sex education website that receives partial funding from the state. Opponents of the site are pointing to Maria’s “extremely insensitive” attitude towards abortion and her “disgusting” language in reference to sex as their major objections to the site receiving state money. But, uncomfortable as they may be with the idea of teenagers and open sexuality, it is the reality for many young people; by the time they are seniors in high school, 62 percent of teens have had sex. What’s more, unintended pregnancies and STDs are still too common among American youth.
So who is this young woman whose sex education website has lawmakers so upset? As it turns out, no one; Maria is a fictional teenager, that acts as the mouthpiece for the site, which offers a broad range of sexual health issues, aimed at the teenage demographic. Full story »
by Claire McCarthy on April 26, 2011
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Claire McCarthy,MD
Recently, the 10-year-old daughter of my friend Dana came home from school and told her that a boy had been teasing her and had recently pushed her off the monkey bars. “I think he likes me,” the girl said.
Dana didn’t know quite how to react. 4th grade boys haven’t quite got charming down yet, and she didn’t want to over-PC the situation. But she didn’t want to condone the pushing, either.
She saw the boy’s mother shortly after that, and mentioned in as offhand a way as possible what was going on at school. “Oh, I know,” said the mother. “Isn’t it cute? His first crush.” Full story »
Have you heard about Thylane Blondeau, the 10-year-old model who caused such a stir this summer with her pictures in French Vogue?
