When I read these statistics on kleptomania, I wondered if the researchers who wrote this had considered children with fetal alcohol syndrome or children who have been in foster homes or orphanages. The Mayo Clinic article said that they think kleptomania is uncommon; that it begins in adolescence or in a person’s twenties but in rare cases begins in early childhood. They went on to say they believe that, less than five percent of shoplifters... more

Hepatitis B is apparently spreading in Asia with no hope for a turnaround due to a lack of understanding about the disease and its transmission. Between 60 and 70 percent of those interviewed in China, Singapore, and the Philippines, believed that hepatitis B is contracted through eating infected food. Even nearly half of those who had the virus believed that they caught it from eating infected food or from generally poor health. Chronic hepatitis B affects 360 million people worldwide;... more

Baby sister was screaming. Our eight-year-old son, Ty, ran to the kitchen holding her and crying. He tearfully said that she got hurt. The 14 year old, Lyn who has FAS, was standing behind him. I looked at her and she said, “I accidentally hit her.” I snatched my baby up and looked at her. Her eye was swelled shut and there was a small cut, just under her eye, that was beginning to bleed. I grabbed an icepack from the freezer and held it to her eye while I dropped into a chair. Baby sister continued to scream for the next 30 minutes while I held the icepack... more

I have been having some frustrating conversations with my 14-year-old daughter who has a learning disability and fetal alcohol syndrome, FAS. Lately, whenever I ask her a question about something, she tells me what she is currently doing. That is frustrating because her response has nothing to do with the question that I asked her. Whether this has something to do with her learning disability or her FAS I don’t know, but I do know that it only started last week. She has been part of our family for 10 years.

Yesterday, for example, she was outside playing army with... more

Having met a young woman last night at a party who is attending Boston University, it’s only fitting that today I should run across an article from BU’s latest alumni publication, the Bostonian. The article, entitled The Hidden Costs of Malnutrition details the research done by Janina Galler into the effects of malnutrition upon children in Barbados.

Galler’s research over the last 30 years has shown that malnutrition did not seem to impact children’s IQs as much... more

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat when the hospital psychiatrist mentioned RAD as a possible diagnosis for LuLu. Not because I’m afraid of that diagnosis by any means. Instead, it’s because I’ve so totally embraced, researched and lived the stuff for so many years that I suspected RAD was NOT what he was seeing in my child. When I asked him to pinpoint the symptoms that would lead him to that as a possibility, he said, because she was adopted internationally.

This worries me a great deal. Those of us who for years have felt like the voice in the wilderness that “RAD... more

Yesterday, I learned that our local elementary school had reported a case of MRSA. Usually if something is going around the school, a note comes home with my child. However, this school infection was actually reported as news on a local radio station, which caused me to do some research. Methicillin-Resistant Staph. Aureus, or MRSA as it is better known as, now kills more Americans than HIV/AIDS, according to a CDC report in the October 17, 2007 Journal of the American Medical Association. Infections... more

Our wise speech therapist (the one who administered Fast ForWord to LuLu last winter) recommended that we buy a software called BrainBuilder by Advanced Brain Technologies. Like many things in our hectic life, this recommendation got pushed aside until I uncovered it several weeks ago at the end of her post-therapy report.

BrainBuilder is based on Sequential Processing, which is our ability to receive, hold, process and utilize information in an orderly way. Just knowing that much you can see why BrainBuilder might be... more

Today’s agenda included our monthly trip to the psychiatrist. Even though LuLu loves our psychiatrist, she hates the appointments, as she really hates rehashing all the things that have happened over the month and talking about the “why” behind her behaviors (like any of us really know what the “why” is).

However, today she did better than usual at that appointment and then came home and did all the helpful things I blogged about earlier.

So, it felt... more

Reuters Health reported October 8, 2007 that 69 children in Nigeria are suffering from a Polio outbreak. Apparently, the World Health Organization (WHO) had provided Polio vaccines to some, but not all, of the children in a northern region of Nigeria. The people who received the oral polio vaccine excreted a mutated form of the virus that was able to infect the children who were not immunized. The virus thrives in areas with poor sanitation and spreads through facial and oral contact. WHO spokesperson... more