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Babies born in the Covid pandemic 'have lower IQs': Three-month-olds now score around 80 on intelligence tests - compared to 100 before the virus struck, research says Children born during the Covid pandemic may have lower IQs because of reduced interactions during lockdowns, a study has claimed. Researchers from Brown University in Rhode Island found babies born since March 2020 have worse cognitive, verbal and motor skills than children who entered the world before coronavirus. Lockdowns have meant children have significantly less interaction with the outside world, leading to 'shockingly' low cognitive development. He told The Guardian: 'It’s not subtle...

My daughter’s friend was recently alarmed when she was told that her two-year-old must wear a mask in preschool. Her little girl already struggles to make herself understood, and her mother worries that the mask will make it harder for her daughter to be understood and that she will have trouble telling what her masked peers and teachers are saying. Now that the face mask has become the essential accoutrement of our lives, the COVID pandemic has laid bare our fundamental need to see whole faces. Could it be that babies and young children, who must learn the meaning of...

A leading psychotherapist in New York City in the last 25 years has warned that mothers who return to work too soon after having babies are damaging their children’s mental health. In a video for the New York Post, Erica Komisar revealed how she’s seen an ‘epidemic level of mental disorders in very young children,’ which she puts down to the “devaluing of mothering in society.” The author of Being There, Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters explained that babies experience a rush of cortisol and a great deal of stress when they’re away from their mothers....

Social media and video games are creating a generation of children with the mental and emotional immaturity of three-year-olds, one of Britain’s most eminent brain scientists has warned. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a senior research fellow at Oxford University and former director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, said she was concerned children were losing their ability to think for themselves, empathise and communicate with each other. Instead, they were being bombarded with instant gratification through social media and gaming which meant that like three-year-olds they would need “something every moment to distract them so they can’t have their own...

This is my first vanity and let's hope the last for those who hate vanities. As a parent, I gained a great deal of insight in life from my sons. I figure it is the central benefit of the self sacrifice of parenting. I am asking Freeper parents and grandparents to share lessons from observing and interacting with their kids.

The prevailing view among parents, the general public and mental health professionals that infants as young as six months old "do not remember" traumatic events that happen to them or to their loved ones has recently been disproved, a professor of infant mental health said at a Jerusalem conference on Sunday.... [snip] ... Most professionals and parents have pooh-poohed this idea because infants and young toddlers do not have the verbal ability to describe the trauma, but it nevertheless is stored in their brains, she asserted....[snip]... People are wrong to assume that when traumatized infants grow up and don't speak...

Massive Study Finds Pre-School and Early Child Education Initiatives Show No Benefit Other studies found marked negative effects from preschool including brain chemistry damage, aggression, negative social and emotional development, illness By John-Henry Westen LONDON, August 31, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A six year comparison of almost 35,000 children has shown that there has been no change in developmental levels of pupils entering primary school in this period, despite the introduction of several new early years' initiatives over the past decade, new research from Durham University's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management (CEM) Centre reveals. The research, presented Tuesday at the biennial European...

Year-old babies who do not respond when their name is called may be more likely to be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder or other developmental problem at age 2, making this simple test a potential early indicator for such conditions, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a theme issue on autism spectrum disorders. Although as many as half of parents of children with autism report concerns about their child's developmental progress before the first birthday, the disorder is usually not diagnosed until age 3 or 4, according to background information...

A new study finds that children who received better quality child care before kindergarten had better vocabulary scores later on than those who received lower quality child care. The study also finds that children who remained in child care longer were more likely to have behavior problems in the sixth grade. Researchers say the effect of child care quality is consistent with other evidence showing that early experiences matter to a child's language development. But, they say, parenting is a much more important predictor of a child's development. The report appears in the current issue of Child Development. It tracked...

EXCLUSIVE Children exposed to high levels of city air pollution while in the womb are nearly three times more likely to have mental deficiencies than other kids, an explosive Columbia University study has found. The analysis compared the learning ability of 183 3-year-olds from Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx with the level of pollutants they were exposed to before birth. The moms wore air monitors while they were pregnant, and the kids are being studied over a number of years. The study found that 42 kids exposed to the highest readings of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in utero -...

ST. LOUIS—Straight out of the womb, infants may be just as aroused by a rhesus monkey call as by human speech. Infants are acute listeners. Previous studies have found newborns perk up more to folk music than white noise. And four-month-olds like listening to people talk more than they like white noise. But when it comes to sounds made by all things biological, newborn babies might not discriminate. The preliminary finding was presented here Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Athena Vouloumanos, a psychologist at McGill University. Surprise In light of...

Insight on the News - National Issue: 03/02/04 Special Report Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects By Kenneth R. Timmerman The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism. A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both parties by generously contributing to their election campaigns, from California libertarian Rep....

Special ReportSaffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects Posted Feb. 23, 2004 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Saffuri (above) has formed relationships with several questionable allies, including Sami al-Arian, who was arrested last year. The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism. A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both...