Strollerderby : IQ

Toddler Becomes Youngest Member of Mensa

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:02:00 GMT

Toddlers have a lot to teach us about life—you just don’t usually expect the lessons to be the phonetic alphabet, or the difference between an isosceles and a scalene triangle.

These are only a few of the mind feats of which two-year-old Elise Tan Roberts is capable. The British toddler spoke her first word when she was just five months-old, started walking at eight months, and now, at two, can spell her name, read the words “mummy” and “daddy,” and count to 10 in Spanish. And naturally, she has the regular alphabet down pat—you can imagine that the ABCs were a piece of cake after memorizing weird words from “Alfa” to “Zulu.”

After her IQ was found to be 156, Mensa welcomed the toddler into its society of people with an IQ in the top two percent of the population. Mensa normally only tests children aged 10 and older, but Elise’s parents were so impressed by her unusual abilities that they had a child psychiatrist asses her. Using the Stanford-Binet Intelligence scale, the psychiatrist found that Elise is in the top 0.2 percent of children her age in the country.

Normally, I would never be in favor of giving a toddler an IQ test, which are widely recognized as imperfect measures of intelligence and could unhealthily predetermine the way a child is treated. But Elise is clearly an unusual case. Would you have your toddler's intelligence tested if she displayed such unusually advanced thinking?

Photo: momsquawk.com

Sick in the Morning? Your Kids Will Thank You

JeanneSager — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:32:00 GMT

Who knew one day I'd do a happy dance over seven months of throwing up and two trips to the emergency room? According to a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics, moms should be embracing morning sickness - it means we're bound to pop out smarter babies.

Take that Ms. "Oh, I loved pregnancy, I never threw up, never even had an upset tummy."

The study was commissioned to look at the affects - if any - of anti-nausea drugs in pregnancy, and there's good news there too. Scientists found that mothers who took diclectin during their pregnancy to fight their morning sickness were not endangering their kids' mental acuity. That in and of itself is important news for doctors, who find that mothers who are suffering from morning sickness are loathe to take anything for fear of hurting their fetus.

But as Dr. Gideon Koren, director of the Motherisk Program, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and one of the study's authors, points out, morning sickness can have debilatating affects on a mother. See above - two trips to the ER and seven months of loafing about miserably sick (see also - why I'm only having one child!).

Whether parents took the drugs or not, the researchers found the kids coming out of cranky sick moms were scoring higher on tests of IQ (yes, I know, a very imperfect system) and mental acuity. This goes along with the good news that women who suffer morning sickness are less likely to miscarry and less likely to have babies with cardiovascular problems.

So moms, carry that barf bag proudly. You're baking a little genius in your oven.

Image: growinstyle

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5 Things That Make You a Breastfeeding Nazi . . . And 5 Things That Don’t

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:01:00 GMT

Ah, breastfeeding and formula. It seems like forever since we’ve been able to talk about infant feeding without immediately getting sidetracked into the explosive meta discussion about how we should talk about it, or, more often, how we shouldn’t.

The ability to discern between truth-telling and guilt-tripping seems to get a little hazy to all involved sometimes. In the interest of lancing the boil I present the following cheatsheet on how not to become a breastfeeding Nazi—and how not to see them where they are not.

Part 1: 5 Things That Make You a Breastfeeding Nazi

1.   Making disparaging comments to parents giving bottles to their kids.
I shouldn’t even have to say that this is Not OK, and I think it is rarer than some on the defensive would like to make out, but apparently strangers hissing “Shame on you, you should be breastfeeding” does happen. So let’s just get this straight: You don’t know what the story of that parent/caregiver and baby are (or even what’s in that bottle), so shut the eff up. Besides, even if you somehow knew that someone really could be breastfeeding, do you really think that being mean is the way to change their mind?

2.   Refusing to acknowledge that sometimes breastfeeding is hard and sometimes it sucks.
I’m well convinced that with the right post-partum protocols (baby to breast within an hour of birth, for example), support, and information (and maternity leave) that breastfeeding could be a lot easier for a lot of people than it is. But the fact is that (a) most mothers aren’t in that ideal situation and (b) even in ideal cases sometimes milk comes in late, latches aren’t formed right, infections happen, medical conditions lower milk supply, etc. and those things can be miserable. Pretending this isn’t the case is rude to the women who’ve struggled really hard—both the ones who persevered through it and the ones who eventually prioritized other things.

3.   Quoting discredited studies.
Guess what? Breastfeeding doesn’t raise your baby’s IQ. That finding failed to control for parental IQ and when they did, the difference went away. I didn’t know that until recently either, but now that you know, have the integrity to drop it from the plenty-long list of advantages to breastfeeding.

4.   Confusing lactivism with promoting one-right-way-to-parent.
I will never forget reading an otherwise decent article critiquing all the subtle ways in which our culture promotes bottle feeding when suddenly the author was on a condescending tangent about the insufficiently committed mothers who had this selfish need to occasionally have a little time to themselves without their kids. I could just hear a thousand undecided pregnant women saying “Well, if that’s what breastfeeding is about, forget it.”

5.   Blaming individuals, not systems.
The major cause with low breastfeeding rates in the United States is not selfish parents. It’s a stew of bad hospital protocols, bad family leave policy, misleading formula marketing, badly crafted parental education, overworked and undertrained labor and delivery nurses, unsupportive workplaces, and on and on. If we all keep that in mind we might even be able to work together.

Part 2: … And 5 Things That Don’t

1.   Encouraging an uncertain or undecided mother to give it a try/keep trying.
This is different from berating someone who has already made a decision and it doesn’t count if it’s done in such a way as to fall under #2 or #4 above. But if someone truly isn’t sure, offering encouragement, suggestions, information, data, or contacts that might help them succeed in something this big is a service not a judgment. This extends to critiquing misinformation or “balanced” pro-con literature that parents have been given or offering to talk to an uncertain spouse.

2.   Trying to get the word out about how some common breastfeeding problems can be alleviated by different nursing patterns.
Talking about breastfeeding “management” tactics to address problems like lactose overload in no way blames mothers for the problems. It certainly sucks to learn afterward that there might have been something in your control that might have helped make breastfeeding work better, but we all know this isn’t inborn knowledge. You can’t withhold the information from those who want it so you don’t offend those who didn’t have it when they could have used it.

3.   Talking about the statistical risks of routine formula feeding.
This is the hot, wet heart of it all. Yes, there are plenty of perfectly healthy formula-fed kids. They are just statistically less common. Yes, fear of illness doesn’t have to trump every other consideration.

But neither of those things mean we should stop talking about the real and stark differences in health between the two options on a statistical level: Two to five times the rate of SIDS, twice the death rate from diarrhea, six to ten times the rate of necrotizing enterocolitis, higher rates of respiratory illness, leukemia, asthma . . . Post neonatal infant mortality rates in the United States 26.6 percent higher. We’re not actually just talking about fewer annoying ear infections here.

We need to talk about these numbers not in order to make anyone feel bad, but in order to organize for the systemic changes that would actually make breastfeeding a viable option for more people.

4. Opposing formula marketing in hospitals.
Formula is an important option to have on hand when breastfeeding doesn’t work for many reasons. In that way it’s a little like a drug, or at least a nutritional supplement. Hospitals don’t hand out anti-cholesterol meds to people with healthy hearts; they shouldn’t hand out formula as a matter of course either. It’s misleading and it implies that doctors think it is a medically equivalent option and it isn’t. (Same goes for opposing misleading formula ads.)

5. Disliking the term “breastfeeding Nazi.”
Aside from this being yet another case of the term Nazi being tossed around like the Nazis were merely cross-patches, not mass murderers, it implies that there is an organized movement to be horrible and judging to all parents who don’t toe the line, instead of a loosely-knit network of people and organizations trying to advocate for a public health measure, some small minority of which sometimes behave in mean or counterproductive ways. The same can be said of both sides of nearly any cause people get passionate about. It’s time we got back to having the real conversation.

Related Posts:

The great breastfeeding Strollerderby Smackdown: Boob Nazis vs Breastfeeding—Why Not? vs Damned If You Do, Doomed If You Don't
Breast is Best 2.0: Pumping in Public

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Government Seizes Newborn from Mentally Disabled Mom 22 Hours After Birth

JeanneSager — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:00 GMT

I'd like to say it was the unthinkable that happened to Barbara Gamble this week. Canadian authorities seized her sixth child just 22 hours after the little girl, Savannah Nicole Elizabeth, was born. It was just what Gamble and boyfriend Vince Kinney feared would happen.

In the weeks since first sharing their plight with a reporter from the Vancouver Sun, Gamble and Kinney have been the hot topic in Canada. They've become the poster children as much for poverty as for the rights of the disabled. The Canadian government has yet to allow the British Columbia residents to take home one of their children - because Gamble has an IQ that's classified her as "mentally handicapped." She's been quite literally referred to as "too stupid to parent."

She may never be able to take proper care of her children, according to some psychiatrists called in to evaluate her, and officials have said it would cost as much as $6,400 (Canadian) to pay for 10 hours a week of in-home support for Gamble during the first three months of Savannah's life. Gamble lives off government assistance herself, although Kinney (who has an IQ in "normal" range) works as a security guard. Both regularly rack up bills that far exceed the money coming in, and welfare officials have questioned the couple's understanding of their limitations.

Although my initial reaction was to let them take their kid home and just keep a close eye on the situation, a look at a mother in a similiar situation who spoke out in support of Gamble last week gave me a greater appreciation for the government's case. Equating the moms' intelligence to that of a 12-year-old, I realized, leaving a baby with a 12-year-old every day for the rest of his/her life would be grounds for child endangerment or child neglect here in America. A wait-and-see attitude on behalf of the Canadian government in this situation would be tantamount to turning a blind eye to possible child abuse.

Still, I've been holding out hope that before Savannah's birth and subsequent seizure, someone would have pitched in to offer some help for these parents. That someone would step in and work with Gamble to help her understand why having child after child is not the answer. Even a 12-year-old can be taught that in life there are rights and there are privileges. Barbara Gamble has a right to make decisions about her own womb. But parenting is still a privilege. The children she's already delivered are alive - somewhere - they should be the focus of her efforts to be a parent, a chance to show what she can do. Savannah is here now too, and if Gamble wants a chance to be her mom, she needs to put her first.

Image: Vancouver Sun

Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

Too Dumb to Parent: Part 2

La. Legislator Says: Let's Pay the Poor to Stop Making Babies

Too Dumb to Parent: Part 2

JeanneSager — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:33:00 GMT

It was supposed to add credence to the claims that the Canadian government shouldn't be taking a woman's children just because they've labeled her "too dumb to parent." But the follow-up story in the Vancouver Sun about a woman with five kids and the mental maturity of a "12 to 14 year old" did just the opposite for me.

The government has seized each one of Barbara Gamble's children shortly after she's given birth. Among their reasons? Gamble's intelligence quotient is somewhere between 63 and 71, officially "mildly mentally handi-capped." She told her story to Canadian press earlier this month because she's soon due to deliver her sixth child, and she worries the government will once again step in to snatch the child. I could certainly feel her pain at never being given a chance.

Nikki Ross did. She's 31 and mother to five. She's also got an IQ just below 70. She says she's doing just fine as a mom. I'm not convinced.

A single mom (she's divorced from the father of her four oldest kids), Ross doesn't have a job. Short of babysitting as a teenager, she never has. She lives off of government assistance and financial help from her mother. A volunteer agency lends help as well - paying a counselor who helps Nikki with everything from filing income taxes to devising activities for her non-school-aged kids. Her house is filled with sticker charts so she can keep on course with her day - and sometimes she's gotten off course. She's lost her children on and off, sometimes to the state and other times her mom has stepped in to take care of a grandchild. Her biggest accomplishment of late? Figuring out a bus route so she could take herself to the doctor. She has yet to master a calendar.

I'm not arguing the rights to life of the disabled. But what about the rights of their kids? When a mom will forever be 12 years old in her mind, how can she parent a defiant 16-year-old, help an 18-year-old go off to college? How can she handle a middle-of-the-night emergency with a sick toddler when she's only just figured out how to get herself to a doctor's visit at 31? Ross has her mother to help her, but 27-year-old Barbara Gamble doesn't have that sort of help. What she has is a boyfriend who racks up bills well beyond his salary and no job of her own. What she has is a mind psychologists call immature, distrusting, egocentric and lacking in insight. What she has is the mental maturity of a 12-year-old and a uterus that has housed baby after baby since she was 20 years old.

Most of us would consider parents supporting their 12-year-old getting pregnant to be bordering on child abuse. Allowing a 12-year-old to move out on their own after giving birth is unheard of. So, no, Nikki Ross' story didn't make me feel better about Barbara Gamble walking out of the hospital with the latest child she's given birth to in an attempt to convince the government she can be a parent. It made me wonder who would leave a child alone with a 12-year-old for the rest of his or her life.

Image: Vancouver Sun

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Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

JeanneSager — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:40:00 GMT

Barbara Gamble’s IQ is in the double digits. Officially she’s mentally retarded. But does that make her “too dumb to parent?”

According to the Canadian government, yes, it does. The 27-year-old Vancouver mom has given birth five times, and she’s due any day to deliver a sixth. Her first five children were each seized by child welfare officials shortly after she gave birth, and she’s dreading this labor and delivery most because she fears they’ll be back.

It sounds like any mother’s worst nightmare, but to be fair, at least one of the children was reportedly suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder when she was removed from Gamble’s care. That would mean Gamble drank throughout her pregnancy – to such an extent that her daughter was born with permanent defects.

But was it because she didn’t know any better? Her intelligence quotient is between 63 and 71. That’s classified as “mildly mentally handicapped,” and psychologists who’ve reviewed the case have said Gamble is emotionally immature, egocentric and depressive. They estimate she can learn basic parenting skills but would have difficulty adapting to the constant changes of parenting in every day life.

By looks at a newspaper alone, that would put her on par with half the parents in America. OK, maybe not half, but pretty darn close. There are no tests to pass to become a parent (unless you count hitting the stick just right with the pee), so there are no firm numbers on just how capable any of us are of being Mom and Dad.

I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, so I can’t pretend to know if Barbara Gamble truly has the skills to learn to care for her children. Providing her a chance, the same chance given to anyone who doesn't immediately set off a warning bell for being unable to care for their child, seems only fair.

But if it's clear – the way a crack baby’s mom’s drug addiction clearly makes her unfit or the way a schizophrenic mom’s living on the street and forgetting to feed her son makes her unfit – I say take the kids . . . and run. Or is it better to leave the kids there until something does go wrong?

Source: Vancouver Sun

Image: Vancouver Sun, Ward Perrin

Breast Feeding Makes Smarter Kids

Cole Gamble — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

According to a study of nearly 14,000 children, increased breast feeding in the first months of life can raise a child’s verbal IQ. The study found that breastfed six-year-olds scored an average 7.5 points higher on the verbal IQ than the control group.

So that’s it, the final piece of evidence that absolutely everyone should breast feed, right?

On a personal note, my wife didn’t breastfeed our two children. It just didn’t work out, but they are healthy, strong and whip smart. We did try to eek some breast milk into their formulas, but regular old breastfeeding wasn’t happening. But say you didn’t breeastfeed out loud and you might get quieted by a hiss of disapproval. Breastfeeding has becoming a very important issue. I think perhaps there was once a backlash against women who breastfeed, that breastfeeding was to be kept quiet and behind closed doors, that it was passé. Now I think we have overcorrected, that there is a backlash to the backlash. We live in a time in when we have made breastfeeding the penultimate parenting issue. It’s not. Not breastfeeding does not make you a bad parent. I do not believe, like a certain PSA asserted, that the choice to not breastfeed is tantamount to a pregnant woman riding a mechanical bull. That’s not a PSA, that’s just fear mongering propaganda. Is breastfeeding good? Yes, that would appear to be the case but the social pressure to do so far outweighs the benefits. Even studies like the one mentioned here can not determine if it is the breast milk that makes the brainy difference, or if perhaps unrelated qualities like nurturing and attentiveness that might just be common in the type of mother who chooses to breastfeed.

How about you? How important is breast feeding to you?

Your Older Sister Actually Is Smarter Than You

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:40:00 GMT

According to a recent Dutch study—which echoes earlier findings—older children are more likely to have higher IQs than their younger siblings, and those with the fewest siblings are likely to have the highest IQs. Oh, plus first-borns are more likely to do better in school, make more money, win Nobel prizes, and NOT die prematurely. As the baby of my family, I conclude that this study, like, totally, majorly blows. And you know what, smarty-pants Big Sis? I don’t care that majorly is not a word. My life is apparently too short to worry about details like that.

It’s believed that these differences in IQ and achievement are at least partly explained by the disproportionate amount of attention older children receive—I think all of us younger siblings are familiar with the where-are-the-photos-of-ME? syndrome. So this is yet another reminder that scores on IQ tests are greatly influenced by environmental factors—and I’m not just saying that because I’m the last born. As writer Matt Kettmann states, paraphrasing Stephen Murdoch’s book, IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea, “Though the concept is deeply embedded in our culture, intelligence is really just a historical coincidence, a measure of nothing at all, save for possibly test-taking skill.” And let’s keep in mind that younger siblings are more likely to be pioneering risk takers—Darwin, for instance, was the second youngest in a family of six.

Still, this study came as a painful reminder of the time my father explained the difference between my sister’s career goals and mine to a family friend: “One of my daughters is in a top tier medical school, and the other writes stories about her depressing love life.” Um, Dad, I believe you were missing a couple of adjectives. I write pioneering, risk taking stories about my depressing love life, thank you very much.

Image: test-iq.blogspot.com

Turns Out TV Boosts IQ

Amy Kuras — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:03:00 GMT

Now here's a study that just makes my day: children who watch at least four hours of television a day see at least a 10-point jump in IQ, and later, in SAT scores.

It doesn’t matter whether the TV is educational or not, either – researchers from the Society for Lenient Childrearing found that it was time in front of the screen, not the content of the programming, that made the difference.

"To our surprise, we found that exposure to everything from Little Einsteins to mommy's stories had a salutary effect," said lead researcher Dora Marquez. "The take-home message from this is that parents should watch whatever TV they wish, for as long as they wish, and not worry about what their children are doing."

Watching TV with the children and discussing it actually lessened the positive effect.

Researchers did express concern that many of the children who watched the most TV showed lower weights than those who watched little to none. High-calorie snacks, especially those with large amounts of high fructose corn syrup, reversed this effect.

As with much about parenting, the earlier the TV-watching commenced, the better. Marquez suggested beginning in the hospital, if at all possible, and certainly immediately on arriving home. "It's a good use for those two a.m. feedings," Marquez said.

An American Academy of Pediatrics spokesperson said the group is scrambling to revise its recommendations posthaste. "Wow, we called that one wrong," she said.

Pollution is as Bad for Kids as Secondhand Smoke

Karen Murphy — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:34:00 GMT

Let's talk about ways to lower kids' IQs: one thing that works pretty well is smoking in utero, and another is exposing them to lead. And still another is simply living in a high traffic-pollution area. Ouch.

Sad-but-true: kids living in high-traffic areas rife with pollution were measured IQ-wise, and the resultant IQ drops were consistent with those found in kids exposed to secondhand or in utero smoking or lead exposure.

Sadder-but-true: kids living in high-traffic-pollution areas likely have little choice about it. Urban living, even when it's a firm lifestyle choice, has its tradeoffs. I think I might choose the myriad cultural opportunities offered in most cities over an average 3-point IQ drop, or at least I'd not be so dissuaded from urban living with so little an actual effect, but I'm not sure how clear or well-defined the research has been in this. They do know that memory and cognition are also affected.

Still, I don't like the idea of high-traffic pollution anyway. Surely the effects are greater than we're presently aware, and isn't that enough reason to cut down on emissions?

Oh, and the worst-offending high-pollution cities have populations that can less afford ill effects in kids. Here's a late-2006 list of the world's worst:

Dzherzhinsk, Russia
Norilsk, Russia
Rudnaya Pristan, Russia
Linfen, China
Haina, Dominican Republic
Ranipet, India
Mayluu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan
La Oroya, Peru
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Kabwe, Zambia

*Cough*

Photo: www.pedestrians.org

Mozart Ain't Gonna Make Your Baby Smarter--That Ought To Be the Sound of an Industry Dying

Kelly Mills — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:24:00 GMT

Did you get one of those "Baby Bach" CDs as a shower gift that you were supposed to play for your fetus and later your newborn to make him or her smarter? Send that crap back. Turns out the whole thing has been one big LIE. Okay, that might be overstating it, but it's a myth, anyway. See, it all started with a study that found college kids did better on this spatial intelligence paper folding test after they listened to Mozart, and then the whole thing snowballed into a CD-video-baby-music-blah-blah industry where we ate that crap up in order to make our children braniacs and give 'em every advantage. Actually, I somehow misheard the whole thing, and thought that baby Mozart was supposed to make your kid richer--so you can imagine I'm doubly disappointed by this. All that damn "Magic Flute" and only pennies to show for it!

Feel free to switch over to a little ACDC, cuz a review of the music-intelligence studies found at most: "The effect is only one and a half IQ points, and it's only confined to this paper-folding task." In other words, you can skip the CDs unless your goal is to raise an origami master. And while I've always been confused by the rise in baby classical music CDs (like, how different are they from the '"adult" versions? Less nudity and swearing?) the researchers actually see a different danger. "'It takes away from other kinds of interaction that might be beneficial for children,' such as playing with them and keeping them engaged via social activity." Which might actually make the kids smarter, though I'm holding out until they tell me it will make 'em richer, too.

Children's Sleep Disorders May Affect Their IQs

Karen Murphy — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:39:00 GMT

My children are pretty good sleepers. My younger daughter, especially, can and does sleep through practically anything. My older son however, while generally a sound sleeper, talks in his sleep and snores sometimes, and my younger son experienced sleep apnea when he was tiny and still seems restless many nights. There are all sorts of sleep patterns in children, and it turns out that researchers are trying to establish a correlation between sleep difficulties in children and IQ. A series of studies was performed involving six to twleve year olds, and it was found that the children who slept less and snored nightly performed significantly less well on cognitive tests than did the children who slept longer and snored less.

Clearly, there is more going on with a child who doesn't sleep well than simple performance on an IQ test. We're talking basic tiredness here plus irritability, difficulty concentrating, and perhaps hyperactivity. Any parent has experienced that in themselves, let alone the children, and maybe even for weeks or months on end. (I can feel the brain cells dying off as I speak.) But perhaps this is the time to help our children solve their sleep problems. I always thought their soft snoring was kind of cute, but it doesn't seem so cute now, not if it means that their brains are being compromised somehow.

Strollerderby : IQ

Toddler Becomes Youngest Member of Mensa

Sick in the Morning? Your Kids Will Thank You

Let Them Chew Gum: It Makes Them Smarter!

Mom or Winning Division I Basketball Coach? You Decide

You Are What Your Mother Didn't Eat

5 Things That Make You a Breastfeeding Nazi . . . And 5 Things That Don’t

Government Seizes Newborn from Mentally Disabled Mom 22 Hours After Birth

Too Dumb to Parent: Part 2

Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

Breast Feeding Makes Smarter Kids

Your Older Sister Actually Is Smarter Than You

Turns Out TV Boosts IQ

Pollution is as Bad for Kids as Secondhand Smoke

Mozart Ain't Gonna Make Your Baby Smarter--That Ought To Be the Sound of an Industry Dying

Children's Sleep Disorders May Affect Their IQs