Kids

Do you worry about your carbon footprint? Have you been putting off getting in touch with that organic farm? Are you looking for eco-friendly products? Well, look no further. This month’s issue of beijingkids explains just how easy it is to go green, or greener, in Beijing.
 
Read our top 20 ways you can help save the planet; find out how to cut back on chemicals in the home; get to know your local organic farmer and use our guide to locate organic and eco-friendly produce and products.
 
Elsewhere in the magazine, Kara Chin ventures into the deep blue with SinoScuba, and takes a trip to Tianjin. We explore Ditan Park and find out what’s beyond the Lama Temple. Our new Notice Board section lets you know what going on in your community. Jennifer McClelland introduces kid-friendly raw food cuisine, serving-up bite sized mushroom sushi rolls and a choc shake so delicious you’d swear it was bad for you.                             
                                              

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

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

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

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

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

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“Nothing is fun. I’m bored.”

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

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

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The Global Times and other Chinese media outlets have announced free measles (ma(2) zhen(3), 痲疹) shots for kids from September 11-20 for "children from 8 months old to 14 years old at 535 vaccination sites and 178 hospitals" due to an anticipated outbreak this fall.

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Boston.com lately reported that as many as one in five teenagers are suffering hearing loss characteristic of a 50 of 60 year old.
 
After testing teenagers on ability to hear a range of quiet whispers, researchers found the resulting ratio to be a third more in comparison to teens in the early 1990s. Though the hearing loss observed relatively slight in contrast to hearing in our everyday lives, Director of Diagnostic Audiology of Children’s Hospital Boston Brian Fligor says that their hearing will only steadily worsen. By the time the teenagers tested are in their 40s, their hearing may have progressed to causing troubles listening in conference calls, he says.

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You can tell a lot about a person by how they eat an Oreo cookie.

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Looking for an abundance of English books for your child to read? Look no further than Haidian Children’s Palace Library!

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