Tag: Children and Childhood

The Internet Is a Wasteland, So Give Kids Better Places to Go

In January, I had the odd experience of nodding along with Senator Lindsey Graham, who can usually be relied on to be wrong, as he berated supervillain Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, about the effect its products have on kids. “You have blood on your hands,” said Graham. That evening, I moderated […]

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What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later

Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic. Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year. A variety […]

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A NYC School Space Fight Spurred by Student Losses and Migrant Arrivals

A bitter clash over space has emerged in recent weeks at a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that two programs have shared for the past decade. It is a battle that reflects events that have caused two of the biggest demographic shifts in New York City’s recent history: the […]

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Why Children Are Selling Candy in the Subway During School Hours

On a subway platform in the Bronx recently, a girl in a puffer coat strolled past passengers with a basket of M&M’s, Kit Kats and Trident gum slung across her shoulder. She looked to be 7 or 8. One rider captured her on a video posted on X, calling out, “No parent, no parent, where […]

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What Happened to Our Covid Social Safety Net?

It’s a riddle that economists have struggled to decipher. The U.S. economy seems robust on paper, yet Americans are dissatisfied with it. But hardly anyone seems to have paid much attention to the whirlwind experience we just lived through: We built a real social safety net in the United States and then abruptly ripped it […]

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The 10-Year-Old Boy Who Has Become the Face of Starvation in Gaza

It is all too easy to trace the skull beneath the Gazan boy’s face, the pallid skin stretching tight over every curve of bone and sagging with every hollow. His chin juts with a disturbing sharpness. His flesh has shrunk and shriveled, life reduced to little more than a thin mask over an imminent death. […]

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The School Issues We’re Battling Over Aren’t the Ones That Matter

A Florida school district, facing pressure about “nudity” in schools, removed from shelves a picture book that showed an illustration of a goblin’s bare bottom. Some students were saved from debauchery when school officials colored in a pair of pants on the goblin. That’s a particularly nutty example, from the newsletter “Popular Information” (the school […]

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Texas Judge Blocks Paxton’s Request for Transgender Minors’ Records

A judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Texas attorney general from forcing an L.G.B.T.Q. organization to turn over documents on transgender minors and the gender-affirming care they may be receiving. In Texas, medical care for gender transition is prohibited for minors under a law passed last year.. As part of an investigation into violations of […]

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Israel, Gaza and Double Standards, Including Our Own

Does the West have a double standard when it comes to Israel, pouncing on everything it does with undue harshness? When he was challenged about the bloodshed in Gaza on “Face the Nation” last weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded, “What would America do” after something like the Oct. 7 Hamas attack? “Would […]

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What to Know About Xolair and Food Allergies

The Food and Drug Administration approved a drug this month that cuts the risk of severe reactions in children and adults exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, tree nuts, milk, dairy and other food allergens — a move that could dramatically improve quality of life for people coping with these risks. The results of the […]

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Drug Drastically Reduces Children’s Reactions to Traces of Food Allergens

A drug that has been used for decades to treat allergic asthma and hives significantly reduced the risk of life-threatening reactions in children with severe food allergies who were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, cashews, milk and eggs, researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, Xolair, has already been approved by the Food and Drug […]

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Drug Drastically Reduces Children’s Reactions to Traces of Food Allergens

A drug that has been used for decades to treat allergic asthma and hives significantly reduced the risk of life-threatening reactions in children with severe food allergies who were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, cashews, milk and eggs, researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, Xolair, has already been approved by the Food and Drug […]

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In Video, Nonbinary Student Describes Fight in Oklahoma School Bathroom

An altercation at an Oklahoma public school involving a 16-year-old nonbinary student who died the next day began after the student “poured water” on girls who had been making fun of the teenager, according to a body camera video interview released by the Owasso Police Department late Friday. The video of the 16-year-old student, Nex […]

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How Tribeca Pediatrics Became a Vast Business Empire

In 1994, Dr. Michel Cohen, a 35-year-old Moroccan-French émigré, opened Tribeca Pediatrics in a storefront on Harrison Street in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood. Dr. Cohen had tousled brown hair and wore thick-framed eyeglasses and clothes by brands such as Commes des Garcons, Paul Smith and A.P.C. He rode around the neighborhood on a bicycle and made […]

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As Medicaid Shrinks, Clinics for the Poor Are Trying to Survive

Appointment cancellations and financial distress have become a constant at Bethesda Pediatrics, a nonprofit medical clinic in East Texas that is heavily dependent on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. On a recent Monday, the mother of a toddler who had a primary care appointment broke down in tears after learning the child […]

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Kansas City Parade Shooting and Gun Violence: Young Victims, Young Suspects

After the shooting in Kansas City this week at a parade to celebrate the Super Bowl victory of the hometown Chiefs, children who had been struck by gunfire flooded into Children’s Mercy Hospital, less than a mile from Union Station, where the shooting occurred. “Fear,” the hospital’s chief nursing officer, Stephanie Meyer, told reporters. “The […]

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Kansas City Hospital Was Treating 11 Children After Super Bowl Parade Shooting

The victims of the shooting at a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs on Wednesday included some of the team’s youngest fans. Eleven children, ages 6 to 15 years, were treated for injuries at Children’s Mercy, a hospital in Kansas City, Mo., said Stephanie Meyer, a senior vice president and chief nursing officer at the […]

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Kansas City Hospital Was Treating 11 Children After Super Bowl Parade Shooting

The victims of the shooting at a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs on Wednesday included some of the team’s youngest fans. Eleven children, ages 6 to 15 years, were treated for injuries at Children’s Mercy, a hospital in Kansas City, Mo., said Stephanie Meyer, a senior vice president and chief nursing officer at the […]

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Children Whose Mothers Had Pregnancy Complications May Face Heart Risks

Women who develop high blood pressure or diabetes in the course of pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children who develop conditions that may compromise their own heart health at a young age, scientists reported on Monday. By the time they are 12 years old, these children are more likely to be overweight […]

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Hind Rajab, Missing 6-Year-Old, Found Dead in Gaza, Aid Group Says

A 6-year-old Palestinian girl and the two rescuers who went looking for her nearly two weeks ago were found dead on Saturday, the Palestine Red Crescent said, ending a desperate effort to discover their fates. Two rescuers with the Red Crescent were dispatched in an ambulance on the evening of Jan. 29 to find Hind […]

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Parents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult Children’s Lives, and Fine With It

American parenting has become more involved — requiring more time, money and mental energy — not just when children are young, but well into adulthood. The popular conception has been that this must be detrimental to children — with snowplow parents clearing obstacles and ending up with adult children who have failed to launch, still […]

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We Americans Neglect Our Children

Individually, we adore and pamper our children. We shuttle them from soccer practice to music lessons and then organize their play dates with meticulous fanaticism. Yet collectively, we mistreat America’s children, especially by the standards of other wealthy countries. When we’re formulating policies for children as a whole rather than coddling our own little angels, […]

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New Research Raises Concerns About Long Covid in Kids

A large analysis published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics underscores the toll long Covid can take on children, in some cases leading to neurological, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and behavioral symptoms in the months after an acute infection. “Long Covid in the U.S., in adults and in kids, is a serious problem,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief […]

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A Super Bowl Broadcaster With Slime and Swagger

Nate Burleson, far removed from the 11 seasons he spent toiling in the National Football League, pulled up his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead during a well-deserved break. Burleson was in a buzzing laboratory with green slime-filled industrial containers, recording Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime” days after explaining the challenge of overcoming turnovers on “The […]

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Robie Harris, Often-Banned Children’s Author, Is Dead at 83

Robie Harris, a children’s book author and former teacher whose writing about sexuality made her among the most banned authors in America, died on Jan. 6 in Manhattan. She was 83. Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her sons David and Ben Harris. Ms. Harris’s most well-known book, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, […]

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In Gaza, We Can’t Justify This Much Suffering

There’s a whip-smart 10-year-old girl in Gaza who speaks good English, displays a radiant smile and seemed to have a bright future. The daughter of an X-ray technician, she had been accepted to an international exchange program and was supposed to be leaving soon. Instead, she’s lying in a hospital bed with a badly infected […]

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Fighting Book Bans, Librarians Rally to Their Own Defense

During 12 years as a youth librarian in northern Idaho, Denise Neujahr read to and befriended children of many backgrounds. Devout or atheist, gay or straight, all were welcome until a November evening in 2021, when about two dozen teens arriving at the Post Falls library for a meeting of the “Rainbow Squad” encountered a […]

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As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy. Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out […]

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How Maurice Sendak Lived With His Own Wild Things

On a frigid Wednesday afternoon, sunbeams poured into Maurice Sendak’s studio in Ridgefield, Conn., crisscrossing one another with the precision and warmth of the children’s books that were born in this room. Sendak died almost 12 years ago, but his studio is exactly as he left it. There are his pencil cups and watercolor sets; […]

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Tech CEOs Got Grilled, but New Rules Are Still a Question

A lot of heat, but will there be regulation? Five technology C.E.O.s endured hours of grilling by senators on both sides of the aisle about their apparent failures to make their platforms safer for children, with some lawmakers accusing them of having “blood” on their hands. But for all of the drama, including Mark Zuckerberg […]

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Will Lawmakers Really Act to Protect Children Online? Some Say Yes.

In the final minutes of a congressional hearing on Wednesday in which tech chief executives were berated for not protecting children online, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged lawmakers to act to safeguard the internet’s youngest users. “No excuses,” he said. Lawmakers have long made similar statements about holding tech companies to account […]

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