Child Development

Mitchell can't stop washing his hands. Philip has trouble keeping his clothes on--even in cold weather. And Luke goes everywhere with a pair of men's bikini underpants around his neck. Bizarre behavior? Maybe by adult standards, but not for little kids. For 4-year-old Philip, 2-year-old Luke and 3-year-old Mitchell, it's just a part of growing up. Parents may be worried when children's habits mimic frightening adult disorders, but the experts say: Relax.

WASHINGTON - During last week's Supreme Court arguments on gay marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia asserted that "there's considerable disagreement" among experts over whether "raising a child in a single-sex family is harmful or not. " Two other justices agreed that gay parenting was a new and uncertain development. Those comments startled child development experts as well as advocates of gay marriage, because there is considerable research showing children of gay parents do not have more problems than others.

We're born to the same parents, raised in the same house with the same values. So what makes one brother a criminal and the other a priest? Why does one sister pierce her tongue and dance the night away while the other stays home doing needlepoint on the plastic-covered couch? So far, neither nature nor nurture has provided a completely satisfactory explanation.

The child who is routinely yelled at, demeaned, ridiculed, ignored or terrorized by a parent may bear no outward signs of abuse. But abused he is, and the negative consequences for the child's mental health as well as his future relationships and sense of self-worth are generally significant, says a new clinical report from the nation's pediatricians. Psychological maltreatment of children by their parents or caregivers is "harder to identify" and "possibly the most underreported" to authorities, especially when it happens without physical or sexual abuse, write the authors of the report , published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Glendale Community College associate professor of child development Melita Baumann has been honored by the school's Academic Senate as its seventh annual Distinguished Faculty Award winner. Baumann, a Glendale resident, was recognized for her work establishing the college's Child Development Center, which serves as a child-care center, a parent education facility and an academic program for students entering the field.

Capitalizing on a growing interest in child development courses, Cal State Northridge's Ventura Campus has increased its annual course offerings and is holding an orientation at 7:30 tonight to draw new students. Academic advisers will explain the course work and goals of the two-year bachelor's degree program, which forms a base for preschool teachers and for pursuing further education degrees.

Wearing little white hard hats, four preschool-age children gleefully hoisted lumps of dirt in the air with small golden shovels as Los Angeles Mission College broke ground Monday on a 27,000-square-foot child development center that will cost $9.1 million. About half the money will come from the $2.2-billion in bond money approved by voters in 2001 and 2003 and used by the Los Angeles Community College District to fund about 110 projects completed to date.

Researchers with the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. will be knocking on doors across Los Angeles County seeking families to participate in a nationwide study on the influence of neighborhoods on child social and educational development. The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, announced Wednesday, will survey 1,000 families in 65 neighborhoods, interviewing them about health insurance, child care, readiness for school and neighborhood life.

Ruth Schwartz Pearce, 72, founding president of the Assn. of Child Development Specialists. Mrs. Pearce began her career in Los Angeles-area cooperative nursery schools and in 1958 was hired by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as founding director of its Therapeutic Nursery School for children with emotional problems. When Head Start began in the mid-1960s, she trained some of the program's first teachers in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mrs.

Joseph Church, 85, a psychology professor and author who wrote two well-regarded texts on child development, died Dec. 23 in New York City, Associated Press reported. Church co-wrote "Childhood and Adolescence: A Psychology of the Growing Person" with L. Joseph Stone. Published in 1957, the book proposed a model of development less rigid than the dominant views of the time.

Children who grow up in institutions instead of with families have major deficits in brain development, a study of Romanian orphans has shown. The findings, published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscore the importance of an enriched environment during infancy and childhood and may help explain the increased rates of depression and anxiety disorders known to exist among institutionalized children....

Leslie Walden's daughter Kennedy will turn 5 in October, which makes her eligible to start kindergarten. But the school year will begin without her. Kennedy is a bright and enthusiastic child, her preschool teacher said — but she wasn't quite mature enough for the private-school kindergarten Walden and her husband had been considering. That assessment echoed Walden's motherly instincts. "I personally felt like [she] is better off being the oldest kid in the group rather than trying to catch up," said Walden, an attorney who lives in Playa Vista.

Environmental factors may be more important than genes in determining whether a child develops autism, according to a controversial new analysis of the disorder in twins. That finding runs counter to decades of prior research, which has generally found that genetic inheritance is the biggest determinant of a child's risk of autism. The authors of the new study, published online Monday by the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, came to their conclusion after studying 192 pairs of identical and fraternal twins in which at least one twin met clinical criteria for the neurodevelopment disorder.

A group of agencies that operate programs for children in California is suing Gov. Jerry Brown over legislation he signed to shift nearly $1 billion away from their funds to help close the state's budget deficit. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, marks the first legal challenge to Brown's budget plan. California voters approved a tax on tobacco products in 1998 to fund development programs for children younger than 5. Brown recently signed a law that moves $950 million from county commissions that run those programs.

Drinking during pregnancy is considered a serious no-no by many women, and there's evidence to show that heavy imbibing while pregnant may be linked with developmental problems in children. But a new study finds that babies born of light drinkers may not show any greater risk of cognitive or emotional problems than women who abstain from alcohol during pregnancy. The research, published online Tuesday in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, analyzed data from a UK cohort study of 11,513 children born between 2000 and 2002.

An infection of the uterine cavity during pregnancy combined with premature birth doubles the risk that an African American child will develop asthma, researchers have found. The combination also increases risk for some other ethnicities, though less severely. About 8% of pregnancies are marked by such bacterial infections, called chorioamnionitis, but it is not yet clear what proportion of asthma is induced by them, said the lead author, Dr. Darios Getahun of Kaiser Permanente's Department of Research and Evaluation in Pasadena.

The on-campus child development center at Valley College in Van Nuys is thriving, despite budget cuts and other obstacles. The center is licensed for 62 children at one time and is usually full. Between 90 and 100 children are at the center sometime during the course of a day. In the evening, it is licensed for 28 children, and about 75 visit the center during evening hours in the course of a week. Another 75 children are on a waiting list for a day program for the preschool children.

Millie Almy, a pioneering researcher in early childhood development and a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, died Aug. 15 at her home in Berkeley. She was 86. Almy was an advocate of child development as a science on which to base the education of preschool children. Her research helped to establish the importance of play in a child's healthy development.

The well-being of children reared by same-sex couples dominated the federal trial over Proposition 8 on Friday as the measure's proponents attacked studies that showed children of lesbians and gays fare well. Lawyers for two gay couples challenging Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage called to the stand Michael Lamb, head of Cambridge University's Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. Lamb reviewed about 100 studies that compared children of gay families to those reared by heterosexual couples.

Raised IN poverty, Dr. Shauna Blake Collins fought fear during nearly 14 years of education. A dropout from a South-Central Los Angeles high school, she earned a GED diploma at 22, became a licensed vocational nurse, a registered nurse, and finally, at 41, a physician. Confidence came only during the last two years of medical school. "Every step of the way, I was petrified," says the Winnetka mother of two toddlers, who recently graduated from UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.