William G. Wilkoff, MD

Tragic, embarrassing, criminal ... Choose your own adjective. The maternal mortality rate in this country is the worst of any developed nation in the world. And the numbers are getting worse with an increase of 14% over the previous year. One-third of these deaths occur weeks or months after the delivery.

In a recent issue of Harvard Public Health, researchers at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health discuss some of the possible remedies for what they describe as a crisis. While some of the solutions they list will require major restructuring of how we deliver health care to mothers, others could take advantage of our current systems by employing a slight shift in emphasis. And here is where those of us on the frontline of care delivery can make a difference.

The researchers point out that “More than 90% of maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to quality care.” They also observe that most mothers have a single postpartum check with the ob.gyn. facility that delivered the baby and then are often left to navigate the health system because transfer to their primary care and/or mental health professional is haphazard or lacking in follow-up.

As I read through the article it struck me that as pediatricians we could and should be playing a larger role in this critical postpartum period when so many women seem to be falling through the cracks in our health care nonsystem. This is not a great “Ah-ha” moment for which I deserve any credit. In 2010 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that mothers be screened for depression at the 1-, 2-, and 4-month visits using either a validated 10-question screening instrument or a more direct 2-question tool (Pediatrics 2010;126[5]:1032-9). However, a periodic survey of AAP members 3 years later revealed that less than a third of the respondents were screening regularly for postpartum depression. In 2019 the academy reemphasized the important role that pediatric primary care givers can play in the detection and early management of the condition.

The reasons for the disappointing response include the list of usual suspects of inadequate training, workload demands, reimbursement, liability concerns, and the difficulty in finding and establishing effective referral networks. Unfortunately, these factors continue to exist, and many cases have multiplied in the wake of the pandemic.

In some states, educational outreach, funding, and changes in the reimbursement structure have resulted in improved outcomes. Not all of us are fortunate enough to live in a state that has made postpartum depression detection and management a priority. However, simply making it our own professional priority can save lives, ease suffering, and improve postpartum outcomes. Here I am talking about first caring and then inquiring about a mother’s mental health. Asking how much sleep she is getting. And then spending the time to give personalized advice on feeding and sleep schedules. Even, if this means ignoring half of the topics on the recommended health maintenance. It doesn’t take but a few minutes to convince yourself that the baby is healthy, and you know that 90% of them are.

However, a new mother who is sleep deprived and already has one foot on the spiral staircase down into postpartum depression represents an emergency. And, you should have the skills to turn it around. But, you have to care about the problem and make it your own priority – high enough on the list to make a follow-up appointment or call in a week instead of waiting a month or 2 until the next visit.

Unfortunately, even with your best efforts there are some families who need services beyond the scope of your practice. Making the necessary referrals can be frustrating and time consuming but not dropping ball until it lands in the appropriate place may save a life.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Tragic, embarrassing, criminal ... Choose your own adjective. The maternal mortality rate in this country is the worst of any developed nation in the world. And the numbers are getting worse with an increase of 14% over the previous year. One-third of these deaths occur weeks or months after the delivery.

In a recent issue of Harvard Public Health, researchers at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health discuss some of the possible remedies for what they describe as a crisis. While some of the solutions they list will require major restructuring of how we deliver health care to mothers, others could take advantage of our current systems by employing a slight shift in emphasis. And here is where those of us on the frontline of care delivery can make a difference.

The researchers point out that “More than 90% of maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to quality care.” They also observe that most mothers have a single postpartum check with the ob.gyn. facility that delivered the baby and then are often left to navigate the health system because transfer to their primary care and/or mental health professional is haphazard or lacking in follow-up.

As I read through the article it struck me that as pediatricians we could and should be playing a larger role in this critical postpartum period when so many women seem to be falling through the cracks in our health care nonsystem. This is not a great “Ah-ha” moment for which I deserve any credit. In 2010 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that mothers be screened for depression at the 1-, 2-, and 4-month visits using either a validated 10-question screening instrument or a more direct 2-question tool (Pediatrics 2010;126[5]:1032-9). However, a periodic survey of AAP members 3 years later revealed that less than a third of the respondents were screening regularly for postpartum depression. In 2019 the academy reemphasized the important role that pediatric primary care givers can play in the detection and early management of the condition.

The reasons for the disappointing response include the list of usual suspects of inadequate training, workload demands, reimbursement, liability concerns, and the difficulty in finding and establishing effective referral networks. Unfortunately, these factors continue to exist, and many cases have multiplied in the wake of the pandemic.

In some states, educational outreach, funding, and changes in the reimbursement structure have resulted in improved outcomes. Not all of us are fortunate enough to live in a state that has made postpartum depression detection and management a priority. However, simply making it our own professional priority can save lives, ease suffering, and improve postpartum outcomes. Here I am talking about first caring and then inquiring about a mother’s mental health. Asking how much sleep she is getting. And then spending the time to give personalized advice on feeding and sleep schedules. Even, if this means ignoring half of the topics on the recommended health maintenance. It doesn’t take but a few minutes to convince yourself that the baby is healthy, and you know that 90% of them are.

However, a new mother who is sleep deprived and already has one foot on the spiral staircase down into postpartum depression represents an emergency. And, you should have the skills to turn it around. But, you have to care about the problem and make it your own priority – high enough on the list to make a follow-up appointment or call in a week instead of waiting a month or 2 until the next visit.

Unfortunately, even with your best efforts there are some families who need services beyond the scope of your practice. Making the necessary referrals can be frustrating and time consuming but not dropping ball until it lands in the appropriate place may save a life.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Tragic, embarrassing, criminal ... Choose your own adjective. The maternal mortality rate in this country is the worst of any developed nation in the world. And the numbers are getting worse with an increase of 14% over the previous year. One-third of these deaths occur weeks or months after the delivery.

In a recent issue of Harvard Public Health, researchers at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health discuss some of the possible remedies for what they describe as a crisis. While some of the solutions they list will require major restructuring of how we deliver health care to mothers, others could take advantage of our current systems by employing a slight shift in emphasis. And here is where those of us on the frontline of care delivery can make a difference.

The researchers point out that “More than 90% of maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to quality care.” They also observe that most mothers have a single postpartum check with the ob.gyn. facility that delivered the baby and then are often left to navigate the health system because transfer to their primary care and/or mental health professional is haphazard or lacking in follow-up.

As I read through the article it struck me that as pediatricians we could and should be playing a larger role in this critical postpartum period when so many women seem to be falling through the cracks in our health care nonsystem. This is not a great “Ah-ha” moment for which I deserve any credit. In 2010 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that mothers be screened for depression at the 1-, 2-, and 4-month visits using either a validated 10-question screening instrument or a more direct 2-question tool (Pediatrics 2010;126[5]:1032-9). However, a periodic survey of AAP members 3 years later revealed that less than a third of the respondents were screening regularly for postpartum depression. In 2019 the academy reemphasized the important role that pediatric primary care givers can play in the detection and early management of the condition.

The reasons for the disappointing response include the list of usual suspects of inadequate training, workload demands, reimbursement, liability concerns, and the difficulty in finding and establishing effective referral networks. Unfortunately, these factors continue to exist, and many cases have multiplied in the wake of the pandemic.

In some states, educational outreach, funding, and changes in the reimbursement structure have resulted in improved outcomes. Not all of us are fortunate enough to live in a state that has made postpartum depression detection and management a priority. However, simply making it our own professional priority can save lives, ease suffering, and improve postpartum outcomes. Here I am talking about first caring and then inquiring about a mother’s mental health. Asking how much sleep she is getting. And then spending the time to give personalized advice on feeding and sleep schedules. Even, if this means ignoring half of the topics on the recommended health maintenance. It doesn’t take but a few minutes to convince yourself that the baby is healthy, and you know that 90% of them are.

However, a new mother who is sleep deprived and already has one foot on the spiral staircase down into postpartum depression represents an emergency. And, you should have the skills to turn it around. But, you have to care about the problem and make it your own priority – high enough on the list to make a follow-up appointment or call in a week instead of waiting a month or 2 until the next visit.

Unfortunately, even with your best efforts there are some families who need services beyond the scope of your practice. Making the necessary referrals can be frustrating and time consuming but not dropping ball until it lands in the appropriate place may save a life.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is built on good intentions. It wants the best for children in the world, and it hopes to support its members in their efforts to achieve this goal. But from time to time, the academy loses sight of reality and makes recommendations that are counterproductive to its stated goals.

The recent release of its new policy “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk” is another unfortunate example of poorly aimed recommendations. A careful reading of the document reveals it to be a well-researched treatise on breastfeeding and the value of human milk, including a discussion of the numerous impediments to the universal adoption of breastfeeding in our society. However, when a document of this breadth and complexity is released to the public it is never surprising that the messages deserving the most attention are lost in the press coverage. Most of the headlines I saw mentioned pediatricians supporting breastfeeding for a year or 2.

Who was the target audience? If it was pediatricians, most of us don’t need a longer list of the health benefits of breastfeeding. We already believe it is the best nutritional source for human babies and realize that the institutional framework in this country continues to be unfriendly to women who intend to breastfeed.

If the audience is politicians and public health decision-makers, the new policy contains a wealth of supportive evidence. However, most pediatricians I know are too busy or lack the skills and enthusiasm to become political activists. For the rest of population, including parents, the recommendations represent a collection of TMI (too much information).

If the audience is women who are considering breastfeeding I suspect nearly 100% already know pediatricians think it is the preferred way to feed their babies. And, likewise, a longer list won’t convince them to try nursing. Additional evidence may simply make them feel more guilty when they aren’t successful.

Many pregnant women have already been told that breastfeeding can be a challenge and given their situation breast milk alone for the first 6 months may sound like an unreasonable goal. The new recommendation that breastfeeding for a year or 2 is good is not a message they want to hear.

On the other hand, if the target audience is women who will be comforted to hear an official statement that normalizes breastfeeding longer than a year, the new policy statement has hit the nail on the head.

Of course the new policy document is sprinkled with caveats that vaguely hint at the possibility that pediatricians are sensitive human beings who under certain circumstances may be able to compromise when it comes to the duration of breastfeeding and the introduction of formula. But this whiff of reality is certainly not the dominant odor in these new recommendations.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the academy was overdue for a policy revision on breastfeeding. However, it should have been one that was reality based. It should acknowledge that there are institutional and societal biases against breastfeeding, and it should remind pediatricians that they can effect change by discussing these realities honestly with parents, while making it clear that we are there for them and their children regardless of how they feed their baby. Pediatricians believe that breastfeeding is the best but not the only way to feed a baby. We have (or will provide) the skills to assist parents succeed in whatever method they choose and strive to minimize the impediments that are within our power to change.

If the academy had chosen to release a separate statement simply supporting mothers who chose to nurse longer than a year, then that would have been a good idea. However, when presented as part of the larger document, that message dominated in the media and only served to fuel the guilt that many new mothers must endure.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is built on good intentions. It wants the best for children in the world, and it hopes to support its members in their efforts to achieve this goal. But from time to time, the academy loses sight of reality and makes recommendations that are counterproductive to its stated goals.

The recent release of its new policy “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk” is another unfortunate example of poorly aimed recommendations. A careful reading of the document reveals it to be a well-researched treatise on breastfeeding and the value of human milk, including a discussion of the numerous impediments to the universal adoption of breastfeeding in our society. However, when a document of this breadth and complexity is released to the public it is never surprising that the messages deserving the most attention are lost in the press coverage. Most of the headlines I saw mentioned pediatricians supporting breastfeeding for a year or 2.

Who was the target audience? If it was pediatricians, most of us don’t need a longer list of the health benefits of breastfeeding. We already believe it is the best nutritional source for human babies and realize that the institutional framework in this country continues to be unfriendly to women who intend to breastfeed.

If the audience is politicians and public health decision-makers, the new policy contains a wealth of supportive evidence. However, most pediatricians I know are too busy or lack the skills and enthusiasm to become political activists. For the rest of population, including parents, the recommendations represent a collection of TMI (too much information).

If the audience is women who are considering breastfeeding I suspect nearly 100% already know pediatricians think it is the preferred way to feed their babies. And, likewise, a longer list won’t convince them to try nursing. Additional evidence may simply make them feel more guilty when they aren’t successful.

Many pregnant women have already been told that breastfeeding can be a challenge and given their situation breast milk alone for the first 6 months may sound like an unreasonable goal. The new recommendation that breastfeeding for a year or 2 is good is not a message they want to hear.

On the other hand, if the target audience is women who will be comforted to hear an official statement that normalizes breastfeeding longer than a year, the new policy statement has hit the nail on the head.

Of course the new policy document is sprinkled with caveats that vaguely hint at the possibility that pediatricians are sensitive human beings who under certain circumstances may be able to compromise when it comes to the duration of breastfeeding and the introduction of formula. But this whiff of reality is certainly not the dominant odor in these new recommendations.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the academy was overdue for a policy revision on breastfeeding. However, it should have been one that was reality based. It should acknowledge that there are institutional and societal biases against breastfeeding, and it should remind pediatricians that they can effect change by discussing these realities honestly with parents, while making it clear that we are there for them and their children regardless of how they feed their baby. Pediatricians believe that breastfeeding is the best but not the only way to feed a baby. We have (or will provide) the skills to assist parents succeed in whatever method they choose and strive to minimize the impediments that are within our power to change.

If the academy had chosen to release a separate statement simply supporting mothers who chose to nurse longer than a year, then that would have been a good idea. However, when presented as part of the larger document, that message dominated in the media and only served to fuel the guilt that many new mothers must endure.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is built on good intentions. It wants the best for children in the world, and it hopes to support its members in their efforts to achieve this goal. But from time to time, the academy loses sight of reality and makes recommendations that are counterproductive to its stated goals.

The recent release of its new policy “Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk” is another unfortunate example of poorly aimed recommendations. A careful reading of the document reveals it to be a well-researched treatise on breastfeeding and the value of human milk, including a discussion of the numerous impediments to the universal adoption of breastfeeding in our society. However, when a document of this breadth and complexity is released to the public it is never surprising that the messages deserving the most attention are lost in the press coverage. Most of the headlines I saw mentioned pediatricians supporting breastfeeding for a year or 2.

Who was the target audience? If it was pediatricians, most of us don’t need a longer list of the health benefits of breastfeeding. We already believe it is the best nutritional source for human babies and realize that the institutional framework in this country continues to be unfriendly to women who intend to breastfeed.

If the audience is politicians and public health decision-makers, the new policy contains a wealth of supportive evidence. However, most pediatricians I know are too busy or lack the skills and enthusiasm to become political activists. For the rest of population, including parents, the recommendations represent a collection of TMI (too much information).

If the audience is women who are considering breastfeeding I suspect nearly 100% already know pediatricians think it is the preferred way to feed their babies. And, likewise, a longer list won’t convince them to try nursing. Additional evidence may simply make them feel more guilty when they aren’t successful.

Many pregnant women have already been told that breastfeeding can be a challenge and given their situation breast milk alone for the first 6 months may sound like an unreasonable goal. The new recommendation that breastfeeding for a year or 2 is good is not a message they want to hear.

On the other hand, if the target audience is women who will be comforted to hear an official statement that normalizes breastfeeding longer than a year, the new policy statement has hit the nail on the head.

Of course the new policy document is sprinkled with caveats that vaguely hint at the possibility that pediatricians are sensitive human beings who under certain circumstances may be able to compromise when it comes to the duration of breastfeeding and the introduction of formula. But this whiff of reality is certainly not the dominant odor in these new recommendations.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the academy was overdue for a policy revision on breastfeeding. However, it should have been one that was reality based. It should acknowledge that there are institutional and societal biases against breastfeeding, and it should remind pediatricians that they can effect change by discussing these realities honestly with parents, while making it clear that we are there for them and their children regardless of how they feed their baby. Pediatricians believe that breastfeeding is the best but not the only way to feed a baby. We have (or will provide) the skills to assist parents succeed in whatever method they choose and strive to minimize the impediments that are within our power to change.

If the academy had chosen to release a separate statement simply supporting mothers who chose to nurse longer than a year, then that would have been a good idea. However, when presented as part of the larger document, that message dominated in the media and only served to fuel the guilt that many new mothers must endure.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Concerns about the potential harm resulting from overzealous training regimens and performance schedules for young elite athletes seems to come in cycles much like the Olympics. But, more recently, the media attention has become more intense fueled by the very visible psychological vulnerabilities of some young gymnasts, tennis players, and figure skaters. Accusations of physical and psychological abuse by team physicians and coaches continue to surface with troubling regularity.

A recent article in the Wall St. Journal explores a variety of initiatives aimed at redefining the relationship between youth sports and the physical and mental health of its elite athletes. (Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2022).

An example of the new awareness is the recent invitation of Peter Donnelly, PhD, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and long-time advocate for regulatory protections for youth athletes, to deliver a paper at a global conference in South Africa devoted to the elimination of child labor. Referring to youth sports, Dr. Donnelly observes “What if McDonalds had the same accident rate? ... There would be huge commissions of inquiry, regulations, and policies.” He suggests that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child might be a mechanism to address the problem.

Writing in the Marquette University Sports Law Review in 2015, Kristin Hoffman, a law student at the time, suggested that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act or state child labor laws could be used to restructure sports like gymnastics or figure skating with tarnished histories. California law prohibits child actors from working more than 5 hours a day on school days and 7 hours on nonschool days but says little about child athletes. On paper, the National Collegiate Athletic Association limits college athletes to 20 hours participation per week but teenagers on club teams are not limited and may sometimes practice 30 hours or more.

Regulation in any form is a tough sell in this country. Coaches, parents, and athletes caught up in the myth that more repetitions and more touches on the ball are always the ticket to success will argue that most elite athletes are self-motivated and don’t view the long hours as a hardship.

Exactly how many are self-driven and how many are being pushed by parents and coaches is unknown. Across the street from us lived a young girl who, despite not having the obvious physical gifts, was clearly committed to excel in sports. She begged her parents to set up lights to allow her to practice well into the evening. She went on to have a good college career as a player and a very successful career as a Division I coach. Now in retirement, she is very open about her mental health history that in large part explains her inner drive and her subsequent troubles.

We need to be realistic in our hope for regulating the current state of youth sports out of its current situation. State laws that put reasonable limits on the hourly commitment to sports much like the California child actor laws feel like a reasonable goal. However, as physicians for these young athletes we must take each child – and we must remind ourselves that they are still children – as an individual.

When faced with patients who are clearly on the elite sport pathway, our goal is to protect their health – both physical and mental. If they are having symptoms of overuse we need to help them find alternative activities that will rest their injuries but still allow them to satisfy their competitive zeal. However, we must be ever alert to the risk that what appears to be unusual self-motivation may be instead a warning that pathologic obsession and compulsion lurk below the surface.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Concerns about the potential harm resulting from overzealous training regimens and performance schedules for young elite athletes seems to come in cycles much like the Olympics. But, more recently, the media attention has become more intense fueled by the very visible psychological vulnerabilities of some young gymnasts, tennis players, and figure skaters. Accusations of physical and psychological abuse by team physicians and coaches continue to surface with troubling regularity.

A recent article in the Wall St. Journal explores a variety of initiatives aimed at redefining the relationship between youth sports and the physical and mental health of its elite athletes. (Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2022).

An example of the new awareness is the recent invitation of Peter Donnelly, PhD, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and long-time advocate for regulatory protections for youth athletes, to deliver a paper at a global conference in South Africa devoted to the elimination of child labor. Referring to youth sports, Dr. Donnelly observes “What if McDonalds had the same accident rate? ... There would be huge commissions of inquiry, regulations, and policies.” He suggests that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child might be a mechanism to address the problem.

Writing in the Marquette University Sports Law Review in 2015, Kristin Hoffman, a law student at the time, suggested that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act or state child labor laws could be used to restructure sports like gymnastics or figure skating with tarnished histories. California law prohibits child actors from working more than 5 hours a day on school days and 7 hours on nonschool days but says little about child athletes. On paper, the National Collegiate Athletic Association limits college athletes to 20 hours participation per week but teenagers on club teams are not limited and may sometimes practice 30 hours or more.

Regulation in any form is a tough sell in this country. Coaches, parents, and athletes caught up in the myth that more repetitions and more touches on the ball are always the ticket to success will argue that most elite athletes are self-motivated and don’t view the long hours as a hardship.

Exactly how many are self-driven and how many are being pushed by parents and coaches is unknown. Across the street from us lived a young girl who, despite not having the obvious physical gifts, was clearly committed to excel in sports. She begged her parents to set up lights to allow her to practice well into the evening. She went on to have a good college career as a player and a very successful career as a Division I coach. Now in retirement, she is very open about her mental health history that in large part explains her inner drive and her subsequent troubles.

We need to be realistic in our hope for regulating the current state of youth sports out of its current situation. State laws that put reasonable limits on the hourly commitment to sports much like the California child actor laws feel like a reasonable goal. However, as physicians for these young athletes we must take each child – and we must remind ourselves that they are still children – as an individual.

When faced with patients who are clearly on the elite sport pathway, our goal is to protect their health – both physical and mental. If they are having symptoms of overuse we need to help them find alternative activities that will rest their injuries but still allow them to satisfy their competitive zeal. However, we must be ever alert to the risk that what appears to be unusual self-motivation may be instead a warning that pathologic obsession and compulsion lurk below the surface.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Concerns about the potential harm resulting from overzealous training regimens and performance schedules for young elite athletes seems to come in cycles much like the Olympics. But, more recently, the media attention has become more intense fueled by the very visible psychological vulnerabilities of some young gymnasts, tennis players, and figure skaters. Accusations of physical and psychological abuse by team physicians and coaches continue to surface with troubling regularity.

A recent article in the Wall St. Journal explores a variety of initiatives aimed at redefining the relationship between youth sports and the physical and mental health of its elite athletes. (Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2022).

An example of the new awareness is the recent invitation of Peter Donnelly, PhD, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and long-time advocate for regulatory protections for youth athletes, to deliver a paper at a global conference in South Africa devoted to the elimination of child labor. Referring to youth sports, Dr. Donnelly observes “What if McDonalds had the same accident rate? ... There would be huge commissions of inquiry, regulations, and policies.” He suggests that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child might be a mechanism to address the problem.

Writing in the Marquette University Sports Law Review in 2015, Kristin Hoffman, a law student at the time, suggested that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act or state child labor laws could be used to restructure sports like gymnastics or figure skating with tarnished histories. California law prohibits child actors from working more than 5 hours a day on school days and 7 hours on nonschool days but says little about child athletes. On paper, the National Collegiate Athletic Association limits college athletes to 20 hours participation per week but teenagers on club teams are not limited and may sometimes practice 30 hours or more.

Regulation in any form is a tough sell in this country. Coaches, parents, and athletes caught up in the myth that more repetitions and more touches on the ball are always the ticket to success will argue that most elite athletes are self-motivated and don’t view the long hours as a hardship.

Exactly how many are self-driven and how many are being pushed by parents and coaches is unknown. Across the street from us lived a young girl who, despite not having the obvious physical gifts, was clearly committed to excel in sports. She begged her parents to set up lights to allow her to practice well into the evening. She went on to have a good college career as a player and a very successful career as a Division I coach. Now in retirement, she is very open about her mental health history that in large part explains her inner drive and her subsequent troubles.

We need to be realistic in our hope for regulating the current state of youth sports out of its current situation. State laws that put reasonable limits on the hourly commitment to sports much like the California child actor laws feel like a reasonable goal. However, as physicians for these young athletes we must take each child – and we must remind ourselves that they are still children – as an individual.

When faced with patients who are clearly on the elite sport pathway, our goal is to protect their health – both physical and mental. If they are having symptoms of overuse we need to help them find alternative activities that will rest their injuries but still allow them to satisfy their competitive zeal. However, we must be ever alert to the risk that what appears to be unusual self-motivation may be instead a warning that pathologic obsession and compulsion lurk below the surface.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

It’s no secret that the fitness level of all age groups in our country is poor. A recent study in Pediatrics sharpens the focus on the question of how we might address the problem in the teenage population. Based in England, the investigators placed wrist accelerometers on their 13- and 14-year-old subjects who were then assessed using shuttle runs at progressively faster speeds.

The researchers found that the participants’ cardiorespiratory fitness improved as the subjects’ time doing vigorous activity increased up to 20 minutes and then plateaued. The study authors could not prove that the vigorous activity caused the increased in fitness. However, they were impressed by the plateau phenomenon and suggest that this might suggest a change in the recommendations by the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services which currently call for 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day for adolescents

At first blush a shift down to 20 minutes of vigorous activity would appear to be workable and achievable. This would be particularly true for public school systems that are already struggling to get any kind of activity shoehorned into their schedules that are already crammed in an attempt to address mandated academic achievement goals. Freeing up an additional 40 minutes of the school day and yielding improved cardiorespiratory fitness sounds like a win-win.

But, let’s take a deep breath and for a few moments return to the world of reality. First, how many school systems are providing that 60 minutes of moderate activity (let’s forget the vigorous piece for the moment) included in the current WHO/HHS recommendations? Next, let’s take a look at what “vigorous” activity means. There are variety of definitions but in general they include sweating, flushing, and dyspnea to the point of having difficulty speaking.

Let’s just focus on the “sweating” part. To me that sounds like an activity that would require some wardrobe alteration at a minimum and very likely a locker room and a shower. Those can be fightin’ words for many teenagers. Even if a school can provide adequate locker room and shower infrastructure change-ups and showers are time-gobbling activities. And, more realistically, what are the chances of getting body image–challenged adolescents to willingly take advantage of them? You don’t have to talk to very many adults before you will hear stories of discomfort and embarrassment resulting from forced locker room and shower experiences. When I was a teenager the only way you could flunk physical education was to refuse to go in the locker room and “change up.” I think or at least hope that physical educators are more sensitive to the fragility of their adolescents students. But, the bottom line is that creating a curriculum that will improve cardiorespiratory fitness is fraught with challenges most school systems can’t address. It’s sad but true.

So, where does that leave us? This new study from England may be helpful for families who are caught in a time crunch and looking improve their fitness or for the physical educator who would like to help his/her motivated students get on a healthier track. But, this study should not prompt us to throw up our hands and toss out the current recommendations of an hour of moderate activity. As unrealistic as it may be for most school systems it allows for the injection of physical activity into academic settings where creative educators can offer things like walking lectures and field trips. It all boils down to the fact that some activity is better than none at all with or without the sweat equity.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

It’s no secret that the fitness level of all age groups in our country is poor. A recent study in Pediatrics sharpens the focus on the question of how we might address the problem in the teenage population. Based in England, the investigators placed wrist accelerometers on their 13- and 14-year-old subjects who were then assessed using shuttle runs at progressively faster speeds.

The researchers found that the participants’ cardiorespiratory fitness improved as the subjects’ time doing vigorous activity increased up to 20 minutes and then plateaued. The study authors could not prove that the vigorous activity caused the increased in fitness. However, they were impressed by the plateau phenomenon and suggest that this might suggest a change in the recommendations by the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services which currently call for 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day for adolescents

At first blush a shift down to 20 minutes of vigorous activity would appear to be workable and achievable. This would be particularly true for public school systems that are already struggling to get any kind of activity shoehorned into their schedules that are already crammed in an attempt to address mandated academic achievement goals. Freeing up an additional 40 minutes of the school day and yielding improved cardiorespiratory fitness sounds like a win-win.

But, let’s take a deep breath and for a few moments return to the world of reality. First, how many school systems are providing that 60 minutes of moderate activity (let’s forget the vigorous piece for the moment) included in the current WHO/HHS recommendations? Next, let’s take a look at what “vigorous” activity means. There are variety of definitions but in general they include sweating, flushing, and dyspnea to the point of having difficulty speaking.

Let’s just focus on the “sweating” part. To me that sounds like an activity that would require some wardrobe alteration at a minimum and very likely a locker room and a shower. Those can be fightin’ words for many teenagers. Even if a school can provide adequate locker room and shower infrastructure change-ups and showers are time-gobbling activities. And, more realistically, what are the chances of getting body image–challenged adolescents to willingly take advantage of them? You don’t have to talk to very many adults before you will hear stories of discomfort and embarrassment resulting from forced locker room and shower experiences. When I was a teenager the only way you could flunk physical education was to refuse to go in the locker room and “change up.” I think or at least hope that physical educators are more sensitive to the fragility of their adolescents students. But, the bottom line is that creating a curriculum that will improve cardiorespiratory fitness is fraught with challenges most school systems can’t address. It’s sad but true.

So, where does that leave us? This new study from England may be helpful for families who are caught in a time crunch and looking improve their fitness or for the physical educator who would like to help his/her motivated students get on a healthier track. But, this study should not prompt us to throw up our hands and toss out the current recommendations of an hour of moderate activity. As unrealistic as it may be for most school systems it allows for the injection of physical activity into academic settings where creative educators can offer things like walking lectures and field trips. It all boils down to the fact that some activity is better than none at all with or without the sweat equity.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

It’s no secret that the fitness level of all age groups in our country is poor. A recent study in Pediatrics sharpens the focus on the question of how we might address the problem in the teenage population. Based in England, the investigators placed wrist accelerometers on their 13- and 14-year-old subjects who were then assessed using shuttle runs at progressively faster speeds.

The researchers found that the participants’ cardiorespiratory fitness improved as the subjects’ time doing vigorous activity increased up to 20 minutes and then plateaued. The study authors could not prove that the vigorous activity caused the increased in fitness. However, they were impressed by the plateau phenomenon and suggest that this might suggest a change in the recommendations by the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services which currently call for 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day for adolescents

At first blush a shift down to 20 minutes of vigorous activity would appear to be workable and achievable. This would be particularly true for public school systems that are already struggling to get any kind of activity shoehorned into their schedules that are already crammed in an attempt to address mandated academic achievement goals. Freeing up an additional 40 minutes of the school day and yielding improved cardiorespiratory fitness sounds like a win-win.

But, let’s take a deep breath and for a few moments return to the world of reality. First, how many school systems are providing that 60 minutes of moderate activity (let’s forget the vigorous piece for the moment) included in the current WHO/HHS recommendations? Next, let’s take a look at what “vigorous” activity means. There are variety of definitions but in general they include sweating, flushing, and dyspnea to the point of having difficulty speaking.

Let’s just focus on the “sweating” part. To me that sounds like an activity that would require some wardrobe alteration at a minimum and very likely a locker room and a shower. Those can be fightin’ words for many teenagers. Even if a school can provide adequate locker room and shower infrastructure change-ups and showers are time-gobbling activities. And, more realistically, what are the chances of getting body image–challenged adolescents to willingly take advantage of them? You don’t have to talk to very many adults before you will hear stories of discomfort and embarrassment resulting from forced locker room and shower experiences. When I was a teenager the only way you could flunk physical education was to refuse to go in the locker room and “change up.” I think or at least hope that physical educators are more sensitive to the fragility of their adolescents students. But, the bottom line is that creating a curriculum that will improve cardiorespiratory fitness is fraught with challenges most school systems can’t address. It’s sad but true.

So, where does that leave us? This new study from England may be helpful for families who are caught in a time crunch and looking improve their fitness or for the physical educator who would like to help his/her motivated students get on a healthier track. But, this study should not prompt us to throw up our hands and toss out the current recommendations of an hour of moderate activity. As unrealistic as it may be for most school systems it allows for the injection of physical activity into academic settings where creative educators can offer things like walking lectures and field trips. It all boils down to the fact that some activity is better than none at all with or without the sweat equity.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

As a physician who has had a career-long obsession with the underappreciated value of sleep, a recent study published in the journal Child Development caught my eye. The findings presented by a group of Australian-based psychologists and educators suggest a positive association between napping and learning by preschool children. While the study itself relied on a very small sample and may not prove to be repeatable, the authors included in their introduction an excellent discussion of a large collection of recent studies supporting the educational benefit of sleep in general and napping in particular.

Although sleep seems to finally be receiving some of the attention it deserves, I am still concerned that as a profession we are failing to give it the appropriate weight at our health maintenance visits. This is particularly true of napping. Understandably, napping doesn’t feel urgent to parents in those turbulent first 4 or 5 months of night wakings and erratic settling. However, as a child approaches the 6-month milestone, napping is a topic ripe for well-considered anticipatory guidance.

When the recurrent cycles of awake-eat-sleep begin to develop into a somewhat predictable pattern and solid food is introduced, it’s time to suggest to parents a strategy that will encourage a napping pattern that will hopefully habituate into toddlerhood and beyond.

It can begin simply as a matter of defining the feeding in the middle of the day as lunch and then programming the period immediately following that meal as a siesta – a segment of the day completely reserved for rest. Many warm-weather countries have been using this strategy for centuries. Try to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription at 2 o’clock in the afternoon in rural Spain. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Most adults and children I know seem to be sleepy during this midday postprandial period. It makes more than a little sense to harness this natural drowsiness into creating a napping habit. However, the challenge for many young families is controlling their schedule to create a period of time when nothing else is going on in the child’s environment, leaving sleep as the only option. For some parents this requires the discipline to pause their own lives long enough so that the children realize that they aren’t missing out on something fun. This means no TV, no phone conversations, no visitors. Obviously, it also means not scheduling any appointments during this siesta period. Skilled day care providers have been doing this for years. But the message hasn’t seeped into the general population and sadly I occasionally see mothers with toddlers in the grocery store at 1 in the afternoon.

Once the nap/siesta is firmly welded to lunch, this gives the parent the ability to make minor adjustments that reflect the child’s stamina. If the child seems to be tiring/getting grumpy, serve up lunch a bit early and the restorative nap follows. As the child gets older and his or her stamina improves he or she may not be sleepy but the siesta remains as a quiet time. Some days it may be a nap, some days just a rest for an hour. By counseling parents to define the period after lunch as a siesta you will be helping them avoid that dreaded transition period called “giving up the nap.”

You may already be including this strategy in your anticipatory guidance. It may help to add to your advice the accumulating evidence that napping may play an important role in the child’s development and education.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

As a physician who has had a career-long obsession with the underappreciated value of sleep, a recent study published in the journal Child Development caught my eye. The findings presented by a group of Australian-based psychologists and educators suggest a positive association between napping and learning by preschool children. While the study itself relied on a very small sample and may not prove to be repeatable, the authors included in their introduction an excellent discussion of a large collection of recent studies supporting the educational benefit of sleep in general and napping in particular.

Although sleep seems to finally be receiving some of the attention it deserves, I am still concerned that as a profession we are failing to give it the appropriate weight at our health maintenance visits. This is particularly true of napping. Understandably, napping doesn’t feel urgent to parents in those turbulent first 4 or 5 months of night wakings and erratic settling. However, as a child approaches the 6-month milestone, napping is a topic ripe for well-considered anticipatory guidance.

When the recurrent cycles of awake-eat-sleep begin to develop into a somewhat predictable pattern and solid food is introduced, it’s time to suggest to parents a strategy that will encourage a napping pattern that will hopefully habituate into toddlerhood and beyond.

It can begin simply as a matter of defining the feeding in the middle of the day as lunch and then programming the period immediately following that meal as a siesta – a segment of the day completely reserved for rest. Many warm-weather countries have been using this strategy for centuries. Try to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription at 2 o’clock in the afternoon in rural Spain. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Most adults and children I know seem to be sleepy during this midday postprandial period. It makes more than a little sense to harness this natural drowsiness into creating a napping habit. However, the challenge for many young families is controlling their schedule to create a period of time when nothing else is going on in the child’s environment, leaving sleep as the only option. For some parents this requires the discipline to pause their own lives long enough so that the children realize that they aren’t missing out on something fun. This means no TV, no phone conversations, no visitors. Obviously, it also means not scheduling any appointments during this siesta period. Skilled day care providers have been doing this for years. But the message hasn’t seeped into the general population and sadly I occasionally see mothers with toddlers in the grocery store at 1 in the afternoon.

Once the nap/siesta is firmly welded to lunch, this gives the parent the ability to make minor adjustments that reflect the child’s stamina. If the child seems to be tiring/getting grumpy, serve up lunch a bit early and the restorative nap follows. As the child gets older and his or her stamina improves he or she may not be sleepy but the siesta remains as a quiet time. Some days it may be a nap, some days just a rest for an hour. By counseling parents to define the period after lunch as a siesta you will be helping them avoid that dreaded transition period called “giving up the nap.”

You may already be including this strategy in your anticipatory guidance. It may help to add to your advice the accumulating evidence that napping may play an important role in the child’s development and education.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

As a physician who has had a career-long obsession with the underappreciated value of sleep, a recent study published in the journal Child Development caught my eye. The findings presented by a group of Australian-based psychologists and educators suggest a positive association between napping and learning by preschool children. While the study itself relied on a very small sample and may not prove to be repeatable, the authors included in their introduction an excellent discussion of a large collection of recent studies supporting the educational benefit of sleep in general and napping in particular.

Although sleep seems to finally be receiving some of the attention it deserves, I am still concerned that as a profession we are failing to give it the appropriate weight at our health maintenance visits. This is particularly true of napping. Understandably, napping doesn’t feel urgent to parents in those turbulent first 4 or 5 months of night wakings and erratic settling. However, as a child approaches the 6-month milestone, napping is a topic ripe for well-considered anticipatory guidance.

When the recurrent cycles of awake-eat-sleep begin to develop into a somewhat predictable pattern and solid food is introduced, it’s time to suggest to parents a strategy that will encourage a napping pattern that will hopefully habituate into toddlerhood and beyond.

It can begin simply as a matter of defining the feeding in the middle of the day as lunch and then programming the period immediately following that meal as a siesta – a segment of the day completely reserved for rest. Many warm-weather countries have been using this strategy for centuries. Try to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription at 2 o’clock in the afternoon in rural Spain. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Most adults and children I know seem to be sleepy during this midday postprandial period. It makes more than a little sense to harness this natural drowsiness into creating a napping habit. However, the challenge for many young families is controlling their schedule to create a period of time when nothing else is going on in the child’s environment, leaving sleep as the only option. For some parents this requires the discipline to pause their own lives long enough so that the children realize that they aren’t missing out on something fun. This means no TV, no phone conversations, no visitors. Obviously, it also means not scheduling any appointments during this siesta period. Skilled day care providers have been doing this for years. But the message hasn’t seeped into the general population and sadly I occasionally see mothers with toddlers in the grocery store at 1 in the afternoon.

Once the nap/siesta is firmly welded to lunch, this gives the parent the ability to make minor adjustments that reflect the child’s stamina. If the child seems to be tiring/getting grumpy, serve up lunch a bit early and the restorative nap follows. As the child gets older and his or her stamina improves he or she may not be sleepy but the siesta remains as a quiet time. Some days it may be a nap, some days just a rest for an hour. By counseling parents to define the period after lunch as a siesta you will be helping them avoid that dreaded transition period called “giving up the nap.”

You may already be including this strategy in your anticipatory guidance. It may help to add to your advice the accumulating evidence that napping may play an important role in the child’s development and education.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Now hot off the press from the “always-guessed-it-was-true-but-now-you-know-it” department comes a multinational study that looked at childhood cardiovascular risk factors and longevity.

Using data collected from individuals in Finland, Australia, and the United States the International Childhood Cardiovascular Cohorts Consortium Outcomes Study investigators sought links between subjects’ body mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, blood triglyceride level, and smoking in childhood with cardiovascular disease and outcomes as they aged into adulthood.

The children were initially enrolled in the 1970s and 1980s. The adult evaluations were done in 2015-2019 when the subjects’ average age was 46. Of the 40,000 individuals who originally entered the study, 800 were found to have cardiovascular events of which over 300 had resulted in death. I found these numbers a bit surprising given the relatively young age at which the follow-up data were collected.

What was less surprising is that people with higher than normal values for all five risk factors as children had nearly three times the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. Researchers found that smoking at a young age was biggest risk factor with body mass index, systolic blood pressure, blood triglycerides, and cholesterol following in descending order. They also found that adults who were obese as children had triple the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. High blood pressure in childhood doubled the risk.

It will be interesting to see if and how these trends change as the study population ages. It could be that the effect of these childhood risk factors is blunted as the those segments at the highest risk die off and/or risk- associated behaviors adopted in adulthood become more prominent. But, it feels more likely that the childhood risk factors will remain as major contributors.

Is this just another ho-hum-told-you-so study or does it have some special relevance for us as pediatricians? At a minimum these findings should inspire us to stick with our calling to commit ourselves to the health of children. A healthy adult population is clearly our legacy.

Of course the two individual risk factors in childhood that appear to be the most potent in adulthood, obesity and smoking, are also the most frustrating for pediatricians to address. However, the study suggests that we should rejoice in those few successes when we achieve them. Childhood obesity has been a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the societal change that has made great strides in adult smoking over the last half century should encourage us that our work with the pediatric population will eventually bring rewards.

Smoking and obesity can include components of both patient and parental behavior. Monitoring cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure hinges on our behavior as providers. Although there have been recent recommendations that we be more attentive, we don’t have a strong history when it comes to detecting and addressing high blood pressure in children. This study should serve as an another reminder to take blood pressure more seriously.

I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that I first learned about the results of this study in an email newsletter from the medical school I attended. I would have hoped that a paper like this from a well known peer-reviewed journal with a clear message about the relationship of childhood health and longevity should have been picked up quickly by the lay press. Again, this leaves it to us to promote the message that the health of children is important in and of itself but plays a critical role in the health of adults.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Now hot off the press from the “always-guessed-it-was-true-but-now-you-know-it” department comes a multinational study that looked at childhood cardiovascular risk factors and longevity.

Using data collected from individuals in Finland, Australia, and the United States the International Childhood Cardiovascular Cohorts Consortium Outcomes Study investigators sought links between subjects’ body mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, blood triglyceride level, and smoking in childhood with cardiovascular disease and outcomes as they aged into adulthood.

The children were initially enrolled in the 1970s and 1980s. The adult evaluations were done in 2015-2019 when the subjects’ average age was 46. Of the 40,000 individuals who originally entered the study, 800 were found to have cardiovascular events of which over 300 had resulted in death. I found these numbers a bit surprising given the relatively young age at which the follow-up data were collected.

What was less surprising is that people with higher than normal values for all five risk factors as children had nearly three times the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. Researchers found that smoking at a young age was biggest risk factor with body mass index, systolic blood pressure, blood triglycerides, and cholesterol following in descending order. They also found that adults who were obese as children had triple the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. High blood pressure in childhood doubled the risk.

It will be interesting to see if and how these trends change as the study population ages. It could be that the effect of these childhood risk factors is blunted as the those segments at the highest risk die off and/or risk- associated behaviors adopted in adulthood become more prominent. But, it feels more likely that the childhood risk factors will remain as major contributors.

Is this just another ho-hum-told-you-so study or does it have some special relevance for us as pediatricians? At a minimum these findings should inspire us to stick with our calling to commit ourselves to the health of children. A healthy adult population is clearly our legacy.

Of course the two individual risk factors in childhood that appear to be the most potent in adulthood, obesity and smoking, are also the most frustrating for pediatricians to address. However, the study suggests that we should rejoice in those few successes when we achieve them. Childhood obesity has been a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the societal change that has made great strides in adult smoking over the last half century should encourage us that our work with the pediatric population will eventually bring rewards.

Smoking and obesity can include components of both patient and parental behavior. Monitoring cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure hinges on our behavior as providers. Although there have been recent recommendations that we be more attentive, we don’t have a strong history when it comes to detecting and addressing high blood pressure in children. This study should serve as an another reminder to take blood pressure more seriously.

I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that I first learned about the results of this study in an email newsletter from the medical school I attended. I would have hoped that a paper like this from a well known peer-reviewed journal with a clear message about the relationship of childhood health and longevity should have been picked up quickly by the lay press. Again, this leaves it to us to promote the message that the health of children is important in and of itself but plays a critical role in the health of adults.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Now hot off the press from the “always-guessed-it-was-true-but-now-you-know-it” department comes a multinational study that looked at childhood cardiovascular risk factors and longevity.

Using data collected from individuals in Finland, Australia, and the United States the International Childhood Cardiovascular Cohorts Consortium Outcomes Study investigators sought links between subjects’ body mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, blood triglyceride level, and smoking in childhood with cardiovascular disease and outcomes as they aged into adulthood.

The children were initially enrolled in the 1970s and 1980s. The adult evaluations were done in 2015-2019 when the subjects’ average age was 46. Of the 40,000 individuals who originally entered the study, 800 were found to have cardiovascular events of which over 300 had resulted in death. I found these numbers a bit surprising given the relatively young age at which the follow-up data were collected.

What was less surprising is that people with higher than normal values for all five risk factors as children had nearly three times the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. Researchers found that smoking at a young age was biggest risk factor with body mass index, systolic blood pressure, blood triglycerides, and cholesterol following in descending order. They also found that adults who were obese as children had triple the risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. High blood pressure in childhood doubled the risk.

It will be interesting to see if and how these trends change as the study population ages. It could be that the effect of these childhood risk factors is blunted as the those segments at the highest risk die off and/or risk- associated behaviors adopted in adulthood become more prominent. But, it feels more likely that the childhood risk factors will remain as major contributors.

Is this just another ho-hum-told-you-so study or does it have some special relevance for us as pediatricians? At a minimum these findings should inspire us to stick with our calling to commit ourselves to the health of children. A healthy adult population is clearly our legacy.

Of course the two individual risk factors in childhood that appear to be the most potent in adulthood, obesity and smoking, are also the most frustrating for pediatricians to address. However, the study suggests that we should rejoice in those few successes when we achieve them. Childhood obesity has been a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, the societal change that has made great strides in adult smoking over the last half century should encourage us that our work with the pediatric population will eventually bring rewards.

Smoking and obesity can include components of both patient and parental behavior. Monitoring cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure hinges on our behavior as providers. Although there have been recent recommendations that we be more attentive, we don’t have a strong history when it comes to detecting and addressing high blood pressure in children. This study should serve as an another reminder to take blood pressure more seriously.

I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that I first learned about the results of this study in an email newsletter from the medical school I attended. I would have hoped that a paper like this from a well known peer-reviewed journal with a clear message about the relationship of childhood health and longevity should have been picked up quickly by the lay press. Again, this leaves it to us to promote the message that the health of children is important in and of itself but plays a critical role in the health of adults.
 

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

I suspect that you have heard or read about the recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience that claims to have discovered evidence that as children become teenagers, their brains begin to tune out their mother’s voices. The story appeared in at least 10 Internet news sources including the American Academy of Pediatrics’ daily briefing.

Based on functional MRI studies by a group at Stanford (Calif.) University, the researchers found that while in general, teenagers became more attentive to all voices as they reached puberty, novel voices were favored over the maternal voices that had flooded their environment as younger children. Of course none of this comes as a surprise to anyone who has parented a teenager or spent any time trying to communicate with adolescents. Although we all must be a bit careful not to put too much stock in functional MRI studies, these findings do suggest a physiologic basis for the peer pressure that becomes one of the hallmarks of adolescence. I wouldn’t be surprised if some clever entrepreneur has already begun using MRI to search for just the right tonal qualities that will make the perfect Internet influencer.

But, will these MRI studies help parents who have already thrown up their arms and admitted defeat mumbling, “He’s stopped listening to me?” The more observant parents already realized long ago that their words were often the least effective tools in their tool kit when it comes to modifying behavior.

Just listen in any neighborhood playground or grocery store to how often you hear a parent trying to get a toddler or young child to correct a misbehavior using threats or promises that you and everyone else within earshot knows will never be followed by any consequence. How often do you see a parent modeling behaviors that they expect their children to avoid?

Some more “enlightened” parents will avoid threats and instead attempt to engage in a dialogue with their misbehaving child hoping that a rational discussion with a sleep-deprived toddler in full tantrum mode can convince the youngster to self-correct.

I’m sure you learned and may have even used the playground retort “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Of course more untrue words were never spoken. Words can hurt and they can scar. But words and threats can also be hollow and will fall on ears deafened by months and years during which there were no consequences. It is certainly nice to know that there is some physiologic correlation to what we all suspected. The good news is that teenagers are still listening to us, although they are increasingly more interested in what their peers and the rest of the world has to say.

What the study fails to point out is that while teenagers may still be listening to us their behavior is molded not so much by what we say but how we as parents and adults behave. Have we parented in a way in which our words are followed up with appropriate consequences? And, more importantly, have we modeled behavior that matches our words? We need to help parents realize that words can be important but parenting by example is the gold standard.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

I suspect that you have heard or read about the recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience that claims to have discovered evidence that as children become teenagers, their brains begin to tune out their mother’s voices. The story appeared in at least 10 Internet news sources including the American Academy of Pediatrics’ daily briefing.

Based on functional MRI studies by a group at Stanford (Calif.) University, the researchers found that while in general, teenagers became more attentive to all voices as they reached puberty, novel voices were favored over the maternal voices that had flooded their environment as younger children. Of course none of this comes as a surprise to anyone who has parented a teenager or spent any time trying to communicate with adolescents. Although we all must be a bit careful not to put too much stock in functional MRI studies, these findings do suggest a physiologic basis for the peer pressure that becomes one of the hallmarks of adolescence. I wouldn’t be surprised if some clever entrepreneur has already begun using MRI to search for just the right tonal qualities that will make the perfect Internet influencer.

But, will these MRI studies help parents who have already thrown up their arms and admitted defeat mumbling, “He’s stopped listening to me?” The more observant parents already realized long ago that their words were often the least effective tools in their tool kit when it comes to modifying behavior.

Just listen in any neighborhood playground or grocery store to how often you hear a parent trying to get a toddler or young child to correct a misbehavior using threats or promises that you and everyone else within earshot knows will never be followed by any consequence. How often do you see a parent modeling behaviors that they expect their children to avoid?

Some more “enlightened” parents will avoid threats and instead attempt to engage in a dialogue with their misbehaving child hoping that a rational discussion with a sleep-deprived toddler in full tantrum mode can convince the youngster to self-correct.

I’m sure you learned and may have even used the playground retort “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Of course more untrue words were never spoken. Words can hurt and they can scar. But words and threats can also be hollow and will fall on ears deafened by months and years during which there were no consequences. It is certainly nice to know that there is some physiologic correlation to what we all suspected. The good news is that teenagers are still listening to us, although they are increasingly more interested in what their peers and the rest of the world has to say.

What the study fails to point out is that while teenagers may still be listening to us their behavior is molded not so much by what we say but how we as parents and adults behave. Have we parented in a way in which our words are followed up with appropriate consequences? And, more importantly, have we modeled behavior that matches our words? We need to help parents realize that words can be important but parenting by example is the gold standard.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

I suspect that you have heard or read about the recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience that claims to have discovered evidence that as children become teenagers, their brains begin to tune out their mother’s voices. The story appeared in at least 10 Internet news sources including the American Academy of Pediatrics’ daily briefing.

Based on functional MRI studies by a group at Stanford (Calif.) University, the researchers found that while in general, teenagers became more attentive to all voices as they reached puberty, novel voices were favored over the maternal voices that had flooded their environment as younger children. Of course none of this comes as a surprise to anyone who has parented a teenager or spent any time trying to communicate with adolescents. Although we all must be a bit careful not to put too much stock in functional MRI studies, these findings do suggest a physiologic basis for the peer pressure that becomes one of the hallmarks of adolescence. I wouldn’t be surprised if some clever entrepreneur has already begun using MRI to search for just the right tonal qualities that will make the perfect Internet influencer.

But, will these MRI studies help parents who have already thrown up their arms and admitted defeat mumbling, “He’s stopped listening to me?” The more observant parents already realized long ago that their words were often the least effective tools in their tool kit when it comes to modifying behavior.

Just listen in any neighborhood playground or grocery store to how often you hear a parent trying to get a toddler or young child to correct a misbehavior using threats or promises that you and everyone else within earshot knows will never be followed by any consequence. How often do you see a parent modeling behaviors that they expect their children to avoid?

Some more “enlightened” parents will avoid threats and instead attempt to engage in a dialogue with their misbehaving child hoping that a rational discussion with a sleep-deprived toddler in full tantrum mode can convince the youngster to self-correct.

I’m sure you learned and may have even used the playground retort “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Of course more untrue words were never spoken. Words can hurt and they can scar. But words and threats can also be hollow and will fall on ears deafened by months and years during which there were no consequences. It is certainly nice to know that there is some physiologic correlation to what we all suspected. The good news is that teenagers are still listening to us, although they are increasingly more interested in what their peers and the rest of the world has to say.

What the study fails to point out is that while teenagers may still be listening to us their behavior is molded not so much by what we say but how we as parents and adults behave. Have we parented in a way in which our words are followed up with appropriate consequences? And, more importantly, have we modeled behavior that matches our words? We need to help parents realize that words can be important but parenting by example is the gold standard.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

“Grandma’s workouts may have made you healthier.” The title and accompanying photo of a pair of well-worn women’s running shoes caught my eye immediately. For whatever reason, we are a family of exercisers. My wife has competed in several triathlons and won two of them. With her I have cycled across the United States. It has not surprised us that all three of our children have run at least one marathon. I have always viewed their continued devotion to an active lifestyle and their healthy bodies as a tribute to the benefits of our attempts at parenting by example. We certainly didn’t coach them, lecture them, or run family boot camps on weekends and school vacations.

I had never really given much thought as to whether their grandparents also may have played any role in their affinity for physical activity until I read that article. Apparently, my mother was a gifted athlete as a young woman. I have seen photos of her playing tennis, skiing, and diving and heard stories, but I never saw her do any of these activities except a single perfect swan dive when I must have been 8 or 9 years old.

Similarly, scrapbooks reveal that my mother-in-law had an active sports life in high school. But we never saw any evidence of her athletic activity save a devotion to a gentle backstroke in the cold Maine waters during the summer. My wife and I and our children never saw these grandmothers do anything more sporting or physically taxing than single-handedly preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner. How could their exercise habits have influenced the health of their grandchildren?

A team of researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston found that female mice who were given the opportunity to exercise produced offspring that had lower fat mass, higher bone mineral density, and insulin levels usually associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. And, in a bit of a surprise, the next generation of offspring accrued a similar benefit even though its mothers were not exercising. The role of exercise in the fathers was eliminated by experimental design.

So it appears that the first-generation offspring’s gametes and hence the third generation was being exposed in utero to something generated by the grandmothers’ exercise. It does not appear to be a behavior pattern that is passed on. It may have to do with epigenetics. Searching for this unknown factor is ongoing and broad based.

Obviously, similar studies in humans are not on the drawing board. Our reproductive cycle is significantly longer than the 2 years of the mouse. However, looking at their current data, the researchers feel comfortable encouraging a mother to exercise during pregnancy as long as it is compatible with the particulars of her obstetrical course. It would be unkind and without basis in fact to blame your mother’s or your mother-in-law’s sedentary behavior for your child’s poor metabolic health. However, it is reasonable to point out to women considering pregnancy that, in addition to avoiding alcohol and smoking, a good dose of exercise during pregnancy will benefit their children. You can point out that it may even benefit their grandchildren. And of course, once the baby is born and a mother feels comfortable returning to her exercise regime, she should go for it. Remind her also that parenting by example is still the best way to do it.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

“Grandma’s workouts may have made you healthier.” The title and accompanying photo of a pair of well-worn women’s running shoes caught my eye immediately. For whatever reason, we are a family of exercisers. My wife has competed in several triathlons and won two of them. With her I have cycled across the United States. It has not surprised us that all three of our children have run at least one marathon. I have always viewed their continued devotion to an active lifestyle and their healthy bodies as a tribute to the benefits of our attempts at parenting by example. We certainly didn’t coach them, lecture them, or run family boot camps on weekends and school vacations.

I had never really given much thought as to whether their grandparents also may have played any role in their affinity for physical activity until I read that article. Apparently, my mother was a gifted athlete as a young woman. I have seen photos of her playing tennis, skiing, and diving and heard stories, but I never saw her do any of these activities except a single perfect swan dive when I must have been 8 or 9 years old.

Similarly, scrapbooks reveal that my mother-in-law had an active sports life in high school. But we never saw any evidence of her athletic activity save a devotion to a gentle backstroke in the cold Maine waters during the summer. My wife and I and our children never saw these grandmothers do anything more sporting or physically taxing than single-handedly preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner. How could their exercise habits have influenced the health of their grandchildren?

A team of researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston found that female mice who were given the opportunity to exercise produced offspring that had lower fat mass, higher bone mineral density, and insulin levels usually associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. And, in a bit of a surprise, the next generation of offspring accrued a similar benefit even though its mothers were not exercising. The role of exercise in the fathers was eliminated by experimental design.

So it appears that the first-generation offspring’s gametes and hence the third generation was being exposed in utero to something generated by the grandmothers’ exercise. It does not appear to be a behavior pattern that is passed on. It may have to do with epigenetics. Searching for this unknown factor is ongoing and broad based.

Obviously, similar studies in humans are not on the drawing board. Our reproductive cycle is significantly longer than the 2 years of the mouse. However, looking at their current data, the researchers feel comfortable encouraging a mother to exercise during pregnancy as long as it is compatible with the particulars of her obstetrical course. It would be unkind and without basis in fact to blame your mother’s or your mother-in-law’s sedentary behavior for your child’s poor metabolic health. However, it is reasonable to point out to women considering pregnancy that, in addition to avoiding alcohol and smoking, a good dose of exercise during pregnancy will benefit their children. You can point out that it may even benefit their grandchildren. And of course, once the baby is born and a mother feels comfortable returning to her exercise regime, she should go for it. Remind her also that parenting by example is still the best way to do it.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

“Grandma’s workouts may have made you healthier.” The title and accompanying photo of a pair of well-worn women’s running shoes caught my eye immediately. For whatever reason, we are a family of exercisers. My wife has competed in several triathlons and won two of them. With her I have cycled across the United States. It has not surprised us that all three of our children have run at least one marathon. I have always viewed their continued devotion to an active lifestyle and their healthy bodies as a tribute to the benefits of our attempts at parenting by example. We certainly didn’t coach them, lecture them, or run family boot camps on weekends and school vacations.

I had never really given much thought as to whether their grandparents also may have played any role in their affinity for physical activity until I read that article. Apparently, my mother was a gifted athlete as a young woman. I have seen photos of her playing tennis, skiing, and diving and heard stories, but I never saw her do any of these activities except a single perfect swan dive when I must have been 8 or 9 years old.

Similarly, scrapbooks reveal that my mother-in-law had an active sports life in high school. But we never saw any evidence of her athletic activity save a devotion to a gentle backstroke in the cold Maine waters during the summer. My wife and I and our children never saw these grandmothers do anything more sporting or physically taxing than single-handedly preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner. How could their exercise habits have influenced the health of their grandchildren?

A team of researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston found that female mice who were given the opportunity to exercise produced offspring that had lower fat mass, higher bone mineral density, and insulin levels usually associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. And, in a bit of a surprise, the next generation of offspring accrued a similar benefit even though its mothers were not exercising. The role of exercise in the fathers was eliminated by experimental design.

So it appears that the first-generation offspring’s gametes and hence the third generation was being exposed in utero to something generated by the grandmothers’ exercise. It does not appear to be a behavior pattern that is passed on. It may have to do with epigenetics. Searching for this unknown factor is ongoing and broad based.

Obviously, similar studies in humans are not on the drawing board. Our reproductive cycle is significantly longer than the 2 years of the mouse. However, looking at their current data, the researchers feel comfortable encouraging a mother to exercise during pregnancy as long as it is compatible with the particulars of her obstetrical course. It would be unkind and without basis in fact to blame your mother’s or your mother-in-law’s sedentary behavior for your child’s poor metabolic health. However, it is reasonable to point out to women considering pregnancy that, in addition to avoiding alcohol and smoking, a good dose of exercise during pregnancy will benefit their children. You can point out that it may even benefit their grandchildren. And of course, once the baby is born and a mother feels comfortable returning to her exercise regime, she should go for it. Remind her also that parenting by example is still the best way to do it.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Recently, I encountered a study in Pediatrics that hoped to answer the question of whether there was any benefit to tactile stimulation in those nerve-rattling moments when a newborn didn’t seem to take much interest in breathing: “Tactile stimulation in newborn infants with inadequate respiration at birth: A systematic review.” Now there is a title that grabs the attention of every frontline pediatrician who has sweated through those minutes that seemed like hours in the delivery room when some little rascal has decided that breathing isn’t a priority.

Of course, your great grandmother and everyone else knew what needed to be done – the obstetrician hung the baby by his or her ankles and slapped it on the bottom a couple of times. But you went to medical school and learned that was barbaric. Instead, you modeled the behavior of the residents and delivery room nurses who had more refined techniques such as heel flicking and vigorous spine rubbing. You never thought to ask if there was any science behind those activities because everyone did them.

Well, the authors of the article in Pediatrics, writing on behalf of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation and Neonatal Life Support Task Force, thought the time had come to turn over a few stones and see if tactile stimulation was a benefit in resuscitation. Beginning with 2,455 possibly relevant articles, they quickly (I suspect they would quibble with the “quickly” part) winnowed these down to two observational studies, one of which was rejected because of “critical risk of bias.” The surviving study showed a reduction in tracheal intubation in infants who had received tactile stimulation. However, the authors felt that the “certainty of evidence was very low.”

So, there you have it. Aren’t you glad you didn’t invest 15 or 20 minutes discovering what you probably had guessed already? You can thank me later.

You already suspected that it may not help. However, like any good physician, what you really wanted to know is whether were you doing any harm by heel flicking and spine rubbing. And I bet you already had an opinion about the answer to that question. During your training, you may have seen delivery room personnel who were clearly too vigorous in their tactile stimulation and/or too persistent in their heel flicking and spine rubbing when the next steps in resuscitation needed to be taken. That’s the next study that needs to be done. I hope that study finds that tactile stimulation may not help but as long as it is done using specific techniques and within certain temporal parameters it does no harm.

I was never much for heel flicking. My favorite tactile stimulation was encircling the pokey infant’s chest in my hand, gently compressing and then quickly releasing a couple of times. My hope was that by mimicking the birth process the sensors in the infant’s chest wall would remind him it was time to breathe. That, and a silent plea to Mother Nature, worked most of the time.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Recently, I encountered a study in Pediatrics that hoped to answer the question of whether there was any benefit to tactile stimulation in those nerve-rattling moments when a newborn didn’t seem to take much interest in breathing: “Tactile stimulation in newborn infants with inadequate respiration at birth: A systematic review.” Now there is a title that grabs the attention of every frontline pediatrician who has sweated through those minutes that seemed like hours in the delivery room when some little rascal has decided that breathing isn’t a priority.

Of course, your great grandmother and everyone else knew what needed to be done – the obstetrician hung the baby by his or her ankles and slapped it on the bottom a couple of times. But you went to medical school and learned that was barbaric. Instead, you modeled the behavior of the residents and delivery room nurses who had more refined techniques such as heel flicking and vigorous spine rubbing. You never thought to ask if there was any science behind those activities because everyone did them.

Well, the authors of the article in Pediatrics, writing on behalf of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation and Neonatal Life Support Task Force, thought the time had come to turn over a few stones and see if tactile stimulation was a benefit in resuscitation. Beginning with 2,455 possibly relevant articles, they quickly (I suspect they would quibble with the “quickly” part) winnowed these down to two observational studies, one of which was rejected because of “critical risk of bias.” The surviving study showed a reduction in tracheal intubation in infants who had received tactile stimulation. However, the authors felt that the “certainty of evidence was very low.”

So, there you have it. Aren’t you glad you didn’t invest 15 or 20 minutes discovering what you probably had guessed already? You can thank me later.

You already suspected that it may not help. However, like any good physician, what you really wanted to know is whether were you doing any harm by heel flicking and spine rubbing. And I bet you already had an opinion about the answer to that question. During your training, you may have seen delivery room personnel who were clearly too vigorous in their tactile stimulation and/or too persistent in their heel flicking and spine rubbing when the next steps in resuscitation needed to be taken. That’s the next study that needs to be done. I hope that study finds that tactile stimulation may not help but as long as it is done using specific techniques and within certain temporal parameters it does no harm.

I was never much for heel flicking. My favorite tactile stimulation was encircling the pokey infant’s chest in my hand, gently compressing and then quickly releasing a couple of times. My hope was that by mimicking the birth process the sensors in the infant’s chest wall would remind him it was time to breathe. That, and a silent plea to Mother Nature, worked most of the time.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

Recently, I encountered a study in Pediatrics that hoped to answer the question of whether there was any benefit to tactile stimulation in those nerve-rattling moments when a newborn didn’t seem to take much interest in breathing: “Tactile stimulation in newborn infants with inadequate respiration at birth: A systematic review.” Now there is a title that grabs the attention of every frontline pediatrician who has sweated through those minutes that seemed like hours in the delivery room when some little rascal has decided that breathing isn’t a priority.

Of course, your great grandmother and everyone else knew what needed to be done – the obstetrician hung the baby by his or her ankles and slapped it on the bottom a couple of times. But you went to medical school and learned that was barbaric. Instead, you modeled the behavior of the residents and delivery room nurses who had more refined techniques such as heel flicking and vigorous spine rubbing. You never thought to ask if there was any science behind those activities because everyone did them.

Well, the authors of the article in Pediatrics, writing on behalf of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation and Neonatal Life Support Task Force, thought the time had come to turn over a few stones and see if tactile stimulation was a benefit in resuscitation. Beginning with 2,455 possibly relevant articles, they quickly (I suspect they would quibble with the “quickly” part) winnowed these down to two observational studies, one of which was rejected because of “critical risk of bias.” The surviving study showed a reduction in tracheal intubation in infants who had received tactile stimulation. However, the authors felt that the “certainty of evidence was very low.”

So, there you have it. Aren’t you glad you didn’t invest 15 or 20 minutes discovering what you probably had guessed already? You can thank me later.

You already suspected that it may not help. However, like any good physician, what you really wanted to know is whether were you doing any harm by heel flicking and spine rubbing. And I bet you already had an opinion about the answer to that question. During your training, you may have seen delivery room personnel who were clearly too vigorous in their tactile stimulation and/or too persistent in their heel flicking and spine rubbing when the next steps in resuscitation needed to be taken. That’s the next study that needs to be done. I hope that study finds that tactile stimulation may not help but as long as it is done using specific techniques and within certain temporal parameters it does no harm.

I was never much for heel flicking. My favorite tactile stimulation was encircling the pokey infant’s chest in my hand, gently compressing and then quickly releasing a couple of times. My hope was that by mimicking the birth process the sensors in the infant’s chest wall would remind him it was time to breathe. That, and a silent plea to Mother Nature, worked most of the time.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

On April 12, 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released the draft of a recommendation statement titled Screening for Anxiety in Children and Adolescents. Based on their observation that 7.8% of children and adolescents have a current anxiety disorder and their analysis of the magnitude of the net benefit, the Task Force plans on recommending that children ages 8-18 years be screened for the condition. However, the group could not find evidence to support screening for children 7 years and younger.

Over more than 4 decades of general pediatric practice, it became obvious to me that anxiety was driving a high percentage of my office visits. Most often in young children it was parental anxiety that was prompting the phone call or office visit. In older childhood and adolescence it was patient anxiety that began to play a larger role.

Over the last 2 decades the level of anxiety in all age groups has seemed to increase. How large a role the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and other terrorist attacks were playing in this phenomenon is unclear to me. However, I suspect they were significant. More recently the pandemic and the failure of both political parties to forge a working arrangement have fueled even more anxiety in many demographic segments. It may be safe to say that everyone is anxious to one degree or another.

Broad-based anxiety in the general population and the incidence of anxiety disorders severe enough to disrupt a child’s life are certainly two different kettles of fish. However, the factors that have raised the level of anxiety across all age groups certainly hasn’t made things any easier for the child who has inherited or developed an anxiety disorder.

Glancing at the 600-page evidence synthesis that accompanies the task force’s report it is clear that they have taken their challenge seriously. However, I wonder whether looking at the 7-and-under age group with a different lens might have resulted in the inclusion of younger children in their recommendation.

I understand that to support their recommendations the U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces must rely on data from peer-reviewed studies that have looked at quantifiable outcomes. However, I suspect the task force would agree that its recommendations shouldn’t prevent the rest of us from using our own observations and intuition when deciding whether to selectively screen our younger patients for anxiety disorders.

Although it may not generate a measurable data point, providing the parents of a 5-year-old whose troubling behavior is in part the result of an anxiety disorder is invaluable. Do we need to screen all 5-year-olds? The task force says probably not given the current state of our knowledge and I agree. But, the fact that almost 8% of the pediatric population carries the diagnosis and my anecdotal observations suggest that as pediatricians we should be learning more about anxiety disorders and their wide variety of presentations. Then we should selectively screen more of our patients. In fact, I suspect we might help our patients and ourselves by questioning more parents about their own mental health histories even before we have any inkling that their child has a problem. While the degree to which anxiety disorders are inheritable and the exact mechanism is far from clear, I think this history might be a valuable piece of information to learn as early as the prenatal get-acquainted visit. A simple question to a new or expecting parent about what worries them most about becoming a parent would be a good opener. Your reassurance that you expect parents to be worried and welcome hearing about their concerns should be a step in building a strong foundation for a family-provider relationship.

Anxiety happens and unfortunately so do anxiety disorders. We need to be doing a better job of acknowledging and responding to these two realities.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

*This column was updated on 5/4/2022.

On April 12, 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released the draft of a recommendation statement titled Screening for Anxiety in Children and Adolescents. Based on their observation that 7.8% of children and adolescents have a current anxiety disorder and their analysis of the magnitude of the net benefit, the Task Force plans on recommending that children ages 8-18 years be screened for the condition. However, the group could not find evidence to support screening for children 7 years and younger.

Over more than 4 decades of general pediatric practice, it became obvious to me that anxiety was driving a high percentage of my office visits. Most often in young children it was parental anxiety that was prompting the phone call or office visit. In older childhood and adolescence it was patient anxiety that began to play a larger role.

Over the last 2 decades the level of anxiety in all age groups has seemed to increase. How large a role the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and other terrorist attacks were playing in this phenomenon is unclear to me. However, I suspect they were significant. More recently the pandemic and the failure of both political parties to forge a working arrangement have fueled even more anxiety in many demographic segments. It may be safe to say that everyone is anxious to one degree or another.

Broad-based anxiety in the general population and the incidence of anxiety disorders severe enough to disrupt a child’s life are certainly two different kettles of fish. However, the factors that have raised the level of anxiety across all age groups certainly hasn’t made things any easier for the child who has inherited or developed an anxiety disorder.

Glancing at the 600-page evidence synthesis that accompanies the task force’s report it is clear that they have taken their challenge seriously. However, I wonder whether looking at the 7-and-under age group with a different lens might have resulted in the inclusion of younger children in their recommendation.

I understand that to support their recommendations the U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces must rely on data from peer-reviewed studies that have looked at quantifiable outcomes. However, I suspect the task force would agree that its recommendations shouldn’t prevent the rest of us from using our own observations and intuition when deciding whether to selectively screen our younger patients for anxiety disorders.

Although it may not generate a measurable data point, providing the parents of a 5-year-old whose troubling behavior is in part the result of an anxiety disorder is invaluable. Do we need to screen all 5-year-olds? The task force says probably not given the current state of our knowledge and I agree. But, the fact that almost 8% of the pediatric population carries the diagnosis and my anecdotal observations suggest that as pediatricians we should be learning more about anxiety disorders and their wide variety of presentations. Then we should selectively screen more of our patients. In fact, I suspect we might help our patients and ourselves by questioning more parents about their own mental health histories even before we have any inkling that their child has a problem. While the degree to which anxiety disorders are inheritable and the exact mechanism is far from clear, I think this history might be a valuable piece of information to learn as early as the prenatal get-acquainted visit. A simple question to a new or expecting parent about what worries them most about becoming a parent would be a good opener. Your reassurance that you expect parents to be worried and welcome hearing about their concerns should be a step in building a strong foundation for a family-provider relationship.

Anxiety happens and unfortunately so do anxiety disorders. We need to be doing a better job of acknowledging and responding to these two realities.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

*This column was updated on 5/4/2022.

On April 12, 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released the draft of a recommendation statement titled Screening for Anxiety in Children and Adolescents. Based on their observation that 7.8% of children and adolescents have a current anxiety disorder and their analysis of the magnitude of the net benefit, the Task Force plans on recommending that children ages 8-18 years be screened for the condition. However, the group could not find evidence to support screening for children 7 years and younger.

Over more than 4 decades of general pediatric practice, it became obvious to me that anxiety was driving a high percentage of my office visits. Most often in young children it was parental anxiety that was prompting the phone call or office visit. In older childhood and adolescence it was patient anxiety that began to play a larger role.

Over the last 2 decades the level of anxiety in all age groups has seemed to increase. How large a role the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and other terrorist attacks were playing in this phenomenon is unclear to me. However, I suspect they were significant. More recently the pandemic and the failure of both political parties to forge a working arrangement have fueled even more anxiety in many demographic segments. It may be safe to say that everyone is anxious to one degree or another.

Broad-based anxiety in the general population and the incidence of anxiety disorders severe enough to disrupt a child’s life are certainly two different kettles of fish. However, the factors that have raised the level of anxiety across all age groups certainly hasn’t made things any easier for the child who has inherited or developed an anxiety disorder.

Glancing at the 600-page evidence synthesis that accompanies the task force’s report it is clear that they have taken their challenge seriously. However, I wonder whether looking at the 7-and-under age group with a different lens might have resulted in the inclusion of younger children in their recommendation.

I understand that to support their recommendations the U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces must rely on data from peer-reviewed studies that have looked at quantifiable outcomes. However, I suspect the task force would agree that its recommendations shouldn’t prevent the rest of us from using our own observations and intuition when deciding whether to selectively screen our younger patients for anxiety disorders.

Although it may not generate a measurable data point, providing the parents of a 5-year-old whose troubling behavior is in part the result of an anxiety disorder is invaluable. Do we need to screen all 5-year-olds? The task force says probably not given the current state of our knowledge and I agree. But, the fact that almost 8% of the pediatric population carries the diagnosis and my anecdotal observations suggest that as pediatricians we should be learning more about anxiety disorders and their wide variety of presentations. Then we should selectively screen more of our patients. In fact, I suspect we might help our patients and ourselves by questioning more parents about their own mental health histories even before we have any inkling that their child has a problem. While the degree to which anxiety disorders are inheritable and the exact mechanism is far from clear, I think this history might be a valuable piece of information to learn as early as the prenatal get-acquainted visit. A simple question to a new or expecting parent about what worries them most about becoming a parent would be a good opener. Your reassurance that you expect parents to be worried and welcome hearing about their concerns should be a step in building a strong foundation for a family-provider relationship.

Anxiety happens and unfortunately so do anxiety disorders. We need to be doing a better job of acknowledging and responding to these two realities.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

*This column was updated on 5/4/2022.