News broke recently that Daniel Murphy, second baseman for the New York Mets, recently took two days off for paternity leave, causing him to miss Major League Baseball’s opening day and the season’s second game to be with his wife and child.
Mike Francesa, a popular New York sports radio personality, devoted about 20 minutes of his Wednesday broadcast on WFAN to a rant against paternity leave. According to him, a …
I have just turned on my computer. It is midnight. I should be trying to sleep right now.
My 5-year-old is sick and I am on call for the next few nights. Fortunately, my daughter should get better in a day or two. She needs Tylenol for her fever, mama’s love and time to kick this virus. But as I sat in bed holding her and waiting for her fever to break, …
The flu, RSV, colds, croup, strep throat, ear infections. They all have one thing in common: they can cause fevers. And as any parent can attest to, it’s often the fever itself that freaks us out more than anything and prompts many parents to call their child’s pediatrician or hustle them off to the emergency room.
Fever is clearly not a parent’s …
I’ve been skeptical of the trend of “holding back” children with late birthdays. These are kids, usually born in the summer, who are just a few months short of the next grade cut-off. Some parents wonder whether it would be wise to hold them back a few months, so they end up one of the oldest (rather than youngest) kids in their class. This might seem to confer an advantage …
I click open the x-ray viewer. After 4 years in emergency pediatrics, I am not really surprised that a tibia fracture underlies the bruised ankle I unexpectedly encountered on physical exam. Yet I audibly gasp as the chest x-ray loads. The torso in question belongs to a chubby little cherub of a 3-month-old in room 11, brought in for red eyes. I begin to count the fractured ribs — 1, …
The holiday season means most of us will be socializing with colleagues and neighbors, friends and family. Chances are good this circle of friendly acquaintances and loved ones will include a child with autism.
Why? An estimated 1 in 88 children are now diagnosed with the neurological disorder, with a four times prevalence for boys. Among other challenges, those with autism often have difficulties with social communication (be it verbally or …
It’s the beginning of cold and flu season. That means a lot of kiddos, big and small, are coming to the office with fever.
As docs, we know that fevers can freak moms and dads out. Kids look pretty awful when their temperature climbs, and it is understandable that parents want to bring them to the office for an evaluation.
In the exam room, I often hear worried parents …
Recently, a family in my practice decided to move out of state, back to where they had lived before. When we said goodbye, the mother said that she was sad to change pediatricians. The pediatrician they would be returning to, she said, “only takes care of strictly medical things.”
Clearly, she meant that I take care of more than the strictly medical things. I was flattered, especially since this was something …
Asthma is a common problem in children — nearly 10% now have it — and the number is increasing. Researchers are not sure of the reasons for this steady increase, but decreased air quality, lower activity levels among children, and an increase childhood obesity have all been implicated. Whatever the cause, it means that millions of American children take medicine for asthma. A significant number of these children end up in …
My kids were at the dentist this weekend for their routine cleaning and check ups (yes, Saturday hours!) when the hygienist mentioned x-rays. I smiled and mentioned I’d rather discuss the need with the dentist after his exam. This isn’t a dental x-ray thing, this is what I do for every test that involves ionizing radiation.
My son, Oliver, has had more radiation than most people will have. Ever. In fact, …
We’ve heard some interesting things about cow’s milk over the years. I am going to share with you four myths about milk that I continue to hear from my patients’ parents.
Myth #1: Don’t give milk to a child with a fever; the milk will curdle (or some other variant).
Truth: As long as your child is not vomiting, milk is a perfectly acceptable …
Online dating is a bad idea for teens — especially young teens.
That’s why it wasn’t particularly responsible of Seventeen Magazine to publish a blog in which “dating blogger” Isabelle Furth floated the idea of using sites like Match.com to find dates. To be fair, she had concerns about the idea, and she’s in college, so theoretically old enough to make these decisions. But college kids don’t read Seventeen. Middle school …
A while back I was working in pediatric urgent care and had occasion to do something I have done many times since starting out in medicine. I called a consult. The reason, like many consults, was an abnormality on a study that required a specialist’s opinion. I paged the resident on call for this particular specialty.
When they called back I was treated, right from the get-go, to some serious attitude. This was a legitimate …
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I remember how my son’s autism diagnosis was delivered. He was three years old. It wasn’t a surprise really, merely a confirmation of something that I expected and feared. He was already enrolled in speech and occupational therapy making very little progress. He saw a developmental specialist at age two and two and half who initially believed that he was not autistic but merely delayed with sensory issues. After we …
Typically, teen girls do not need a pelvic exam until they are 21. Most parents are surprised to hear this, especially if they know their teen is sexually active.
About 1/2 of teen girls are sexually active during high school which puts them at risk for sexually transmitted infections (STI) and unwanted pregnancy. However, for routine prevention and care, girls rarely need an internal pelvic or speculum exam during high school. …
Kathy wrote about her son: “What can cause a 9-year-old boy to poop in his pants occasionally and not feel it? He was completely potty trained at age three. I have found dirty underwear and poop on the bathroom floor–and it just concerns me that he is unaware of it. It has been suggested at checkups that he may be constipated. My mother suggests he may simply not be paying …
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Our bodies are mostly water — about 60% water, in fact. This varies a little with age and sex, but it is a good rough estimate. Of that 60% water, about a third of it is outside the body’s cells, so-called extracellular fluid, and two thirds of it is inside the body’s cells, so-called intracellular fluid. The easiest way to remember this is the “60/40/20″ rule: total body water is …
It is hard to see a child in pain.
I have seen quite a few children in the emergency departments of South Carolina in the past three years, more than I could have imagined just a while ago.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a child psychiatrist by trade. Like any general psychiatrist, my training provided me with didactic …
Autism is a communication disorder where children have difficulty relating to other people. Pediatricians watch for speech delay as a sign of autism. Even before your child is expected to start talking, around a year old, you can watch for communication milestones. Problems attaining these milestones may indicate autism or other disorders such as hearing loss, vision loss, isolated language delay, or other developmental delays.
By six weeks of age, your …
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Jess, like many parents, has been hearing conflicting information about what crying can do to your baby.
She wrote: “So, my husband and I accidentally let our kiddo (5.5 months) cry it out. So of course, I’m spending all sorts of time on Google finding out that I’ve caused long-term damage to my son and he’ll be more likely to get ADHD and …
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