December 16, 2011, 12:05 AM
By the time Krista McGhee pulled her son from school in the Riverside Unified School District, she said the fourth-grader had taken to hiding under his desk, been bitten by his classmates and been bruised by a teacher's aide trying to restrain him. McGhee's son, who has Asperger's...
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October 31, 2011, 12:05 AM
A majority of American parents say they are concerned that digital media is interfering with childhood development. Yet most do not think their own children spend too much time with electronic devices. That’s according to a recent report [PDF] by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame...
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October 7, 2011, 12:05 AM
Walk down the aisles of any toy store, and chances are you’ll see an assortment of claims on the boxes. Some products say they'll teach babies about phonetics and reading. Some toys claim to help children develop math and problem-solving skills. But researchers say many claims are...
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September 9, 2011, 12:05 AM
Since the 1980s, educators around the country have been urged to help children build self-esteem to make them feel good about themselves and reduce discipline problems. Now, some researchers are saying a better approach is to cultivate self-compassion in children, to help them accept their...
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August 11, 2011, 12:05 AM
The parents of a 6-year-old Oakland Unified School District student are claiming that poor supervision in a preschool class resulted in their daughter being molested by a classmate. In a lawsuit filed on behalf of the girl in Alameda County Superior Court late last month, a lawyer for the...
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August 4, 2011, 12:05 AM
Chris Rodriguez was taking a piano lesson around 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 10, 2008, at a North Oakland music school. Across the street, an inebriated man robbed a gas station, firing three shots at an attendant. None of the bullets hit their intended target. Instead, one cut through the school...
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July 29, 2011, 12:05 AM
California teenagers are living and attending schools in junk food wastelands, according to a new study by researchers at UCLA. Researchers analyzed the number of healthy and unhealthy restaurants and food outlets near teens' schools and homes. The result: For nearly 75 percent...
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July 14, 2011, 12:05 AM
Summer is officially here, and the season for enjoying California's beaches, pools and lakes has begun. And every year, along with the predictably hot sun, especially inland, comes another predictable and tragic reality: an increase in drownings. In just the past six weeks...
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July 1, 2011, 12:05 AM
As many as 220,000 uninsured children in California will be excluded from health care reform programs because of their or their parents' immigration status, according to an analysis released yesterday. When fully implemented in 2014, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...
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June 30, 2011, 12:05 AM
The number of U.S. children living with at least one grandparent in their homes increased 64 percent between 1991 and 2009, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released yesterday. There were 7.8 million children living with at least one grandparent in 2009, up from 4.7 million...
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June 21, 2011, 12:05 AM
Protecting children online has been a growing concern since, well, the Internet went mainstream. Predators can easily hide their identities, pretending to be younger and using fake profile pictures. With more than 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is the social network of choice to share photos...
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June 6, 2011, 12:05 AM
A bill that would allow schools to train employees to administer medication to children during a seizure passed out of the state Senate last week, despite strong opposition from nurses and teachers. As drama in the state Capitol goes, this bill has it all. It brings years of budget...
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April 22, 2011, 12:06 AM
A Berkeley High School student says she endured months of sexual harassment from her guidance counselor and the school wouldn’t do anything about it. In a lawsuit filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, the student, a senior identified as Lilah R., contended that the Berkeley...
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April 21, 2011, 12:05 AM
Non-custodial parents owe a near-record $19.2 billion in delinquent child support payments in California – a stubbornly large amount that researchers blame primarily on the state's high interest rate for debt. Over the years state legislators have made policy changes in an attempt to...
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April 18, 2011, 12:05 AM
A study released Friday by UC Berkeley and other researchers found that California children have seven times more flame-retardant chemicals in their blood than their foreign-born counterparts, once again raising concern about an obscure state law. The study focused on chemicals called “...
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