Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 53 hours per week on electronic media. How to bridge the digital gap.

Meredith Marx remembers family game night and how she, her brother and their parents gathered around the dining room table to talk, laugh and move game pieces around the boards. It was a fun way to reconnect and unwind.

Try as she might, it’s become much harder for the Baltimore-area mom to create similar memories for her 6-year-old twins, Casey and Parker. The exuberant kindergartners have been surrounded by technology all of their lives...

As the holidays call for good will toward men, new research indicates that kids who are kinder are also happier and more popular. This finding suggests that simple and brief acts of kindness might help reduce bullying, the researchers say.

At the top of parents’ wish lists is for their children to be happy, to be good and to be well-liked, and past research has suggested these goals may be not only compatible but complementary...

A ‘Google generation’ which relies on the Internet for everything is in danger of becoming ‘brain-dead’, a leading UK inventor has warned.

Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, said children are losing creativity and practical skills because they spend too much time in front of screens.

The 75-year-old from Twickenham, south-west London, said he fears that the next generation of inventors is being lost, with young people often unable to make anything with their hands, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

He said children could rediscover vital skills if schools used practical toys like Mecc...

New data suggest that we may have turned an important corner in the childhood obesity epidemic.

While rates of obesity and extreme obesity in preschoolers rose from 1998 to 2003, they began to plateau soon thereafter. And childhood obesity rates decreased slightly in 2010.

«We are very encouraged by this data,» says study researcher Heidi M. Blanck, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta. «It’s pretty exciting and a nice turning of the tide. But we have to stay vigilant or it will go in the other direction.»

Researchers looked at data on 27.5 million children aged 2 to 4 from 1998 to 2010...

Almost all babies get a cold before their first birthday. Does your baby have a cold? Many parents are hesitant to give their children decongestants, antihistamines, or other drugs. Here’s a look at natural ways to treat your baby’s sniffles and sneezes.

At least two common gene variants are linked to «clinically meaningful» differences in pain scores in children after major surgery, reports a study in the January issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).

«[O]ur study is highly suggestive of a genetic component in pain response among children,» concludes the study by Dr Chantal Mamie and colleagues of Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland...

The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or «extremely obese» has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

Although the decline was only «modest» and may not apply to all children, researchers said it was still encouraging.

«It’s extremely important to make sure we’re monitoring obesity in this low-income group,» said the CDC’s Heidi Blanck, who worked on the study.

Those kids are known to be at higher risk of obesity than their well-off peers, in part because access to healthy food is often limited in poorer neighborhoo...

For the umpteenth time on a recent afternoon, Ethan Todd sprang to his feet and reached for a toy truck. And for the umpteenth time, the 5-year-old boy’s thin legs buckled and collapsed.

The San Mateo boy then allowed Karen Price to sit behind him in the Palo Alto studio and knead his calves and thighs. «Look how high your feet can go!» she said, lifting his right leg into the air.

To the casual eye, what Price did may have looked like a massage...

One of the biggest questions tech-savvy parents must contend with when it comes to tablets for their kids is this: do I really want to give my precious wee one a really expensive piece metal and glass?

Tech blogger Shelly Palmer asked the same question this holiday season and came up with five good tablet options for kids.

Palmer’s picks are pretty good, touching on safe and educational options for younger and older kids alike. I like the fact that he threw out an Android- and an iOS-based device, though I’m not sure that I would have picked a Kindle Fire.

Unless you want to (a) give your ch...

Kids who have food allergies or are overweight may be especially likely to get bullied by their peers, two new studies suggest.

Not surprisingly, researchers also found targets of bullying were more distressed and anxious and had a worse quality of life, in general, than those who weren’t picked on.

Bullying has become a concern among parents, doctors and school administrators since research and news stories emerged linking bullying — including online «cyberbullying» — with depression and even suicide.

«There has been a shift and people are more and more recognizing that bullying has real co...