A question that child psychologists in Littleton often receive is “when do I talk to kids about sexuality and relationships?” Many parents are rightly concerned that today’s world and pop culture are far too sexualized, and that children are being exposed to these messages from a very early age. Unfortunately, unless you and your family live in a very secluded area, you will not be able to avoid these messages. From TV, to smartphone ads, to billboards on the highway, children are exposed to messages about sex and relationships that they may not understand. This can cause confusion and discomfort, or may encourage a child to become precociously interested in these topics—even though they have never experienced them firsthand. Here are some suggestions for handling sex and relationships in a modern age.

Work from your value perspective. By building up your family values to be as strong as they can be, all future discussion will be easier. This includes local culture, religion, and your own family’s unique way of doing things. Many people use their spiritual beliefs to teach children about the world, this area is no different.

Attend to biology. Especially with young children, the interest is more about the “what?” and “why?” of the situation, not the emotions. Children understand from a young age that creature of all types, including humans, pets, and bugs outside, engage in mating rituals and have body parts for those rituals. Explaining the biological purpose of these things will help children to feel more confident and can give them a leg up in biology class.

Set clear boundaries. Infants and young children have no “shame” or sense of privacy about their bodies. This is a social structure that only humans enjoy, and that has to be shaped over time. This is also area with many different boundaries. For example, while it may be perfectly acceptable for everyone in your household to walk around in underclothes, explain to your child why this behavior might not be acceptable in other people’s houses. Help your child to learn why his or her “private parts” are supposed to be private, and set clear boundaries about touching or talking about those private parts with others. Approach this issue not from a place of shame or embarrassment, but as keeping something very special (your child’s body) safe and respected.

Start early. As much as you might not want to believe it, most children have learned at least something about what sex is by the time they are in middle school, and are already thinking about dating relationships. Even if you forbid talk of these things in your house, chances are, they have heard it from friends. Make sure your child has the most accurate and responsible information by discussing it yourself. By the time they are old enough to leave the house, they will have heard your feelings on the topic enough times that they have taken it to heart!

If your child is showing sexualized behaviors that do not resolve with conversation and monitoring, or if you would like to find out more about how to talk to your child about issues like sex and relationships, contact a skilled psychologist. In Highlands Ranch, children’s play therapy can help your child to express confusion or thoughts about these and other difficult topics, and can help build strong skills for success in the future. Contact Dr. Lazarus today at to set up an appointment!

When summer break is on the horizon and the last few days of the school year approach, many kids start dreaming about leisure time, freedom from homework and responsibilities and long days spent relaxing in the sun with friends. The problem is that while summer is a great opportunity for kids to take a break and recharge, they don’t need months to do this.

In fact, the extended break actually does more harm than good, and results in a process known as summer learning loss. There are many reasons why this is detrimental, especially for kids who are preparing for college, so it’s important that parents encourage their kids to continue their studies— especially math and reading—throughout the summer months.

Summer Learning Loss in Reading and Math

Over the summer holidays, school children lose an average of two to three months’ worth of knowledge in certain subjects, particularly math and reading. As a testament to this, students perform worse on tests taken at the end of summer versus ones taken at the beginning. The reason is because humans learn best when education is continuous and without extended pauses.

Worse yet, these learning losses are cumulative; meaning a student finishing high school will have lost a great deal more knowledge due to extended summers than a child who’s only a few years into school.

Effects of Lost Knowledge

One of the most noticeable effects of summer learning loss is that teachers spend upwards of six weeks at the beginning of every new school year reviewing material from the previous year, rather than picking up where they left off. This can lead to children being bored and apathetic, and this is never a good way for children to approach their education.

Children who are bored or who don’t care about school aren’t likely to excel academically, and this can impact the rest of their lives, including whether they can attend college and what kinds of job opportunities are open to them.

Creative Ways to Encourage Summer Learning

While most children won’t want to spend extra time during their summer holiday focused on school, there are ways that parents can make summer learning more fun and enjoyable. For one, ask your child to keep a daily journal in which to chronicle events, write a continuing story, or practice other writing techniques that will fend off summer learning loss for literacy.

You can also start a book club with your child, where each of you reads the same book over a one- or two-week period, and at the end of the time you can get together to discuss things like theme, plot, the characters, and how you enjoyed the story. And along with being a vital life skill and a great way to spend quality time together, cooking is also an excellent way to keep up your child’s reading and math skills, thanks to things like recipes, grocery lists, ingredient quantities, and measurements.

Many Littleton child behavior psychologists have seen what happens when kids aren’t challenged at school, and this includes poor academic performance, behavioral problems, and disruptive behavior in the classroom. One easy way to prevent learning loss is to encourage your child to participate in educational activities during the summer months, particularly as they apply to reading and math.

The good news is that summertime affords many opportunities for parents to encourage fun, unique, and engaging methods of learning that will help kids retain the information they worked so hard to learn during the school year.

This is an interview between Dr. Steven Lazarus, Psychologist and a high school student named Abigail. She gave permission to post the interview.

Dear Dr. Steven Lazarus,

Thank you for taking your time to answer the following questions. I am honored that you want to post this to your blog, feel free to use it anywhere you would like. Here are my questions, answer the best you can. Thank you!
1) Are there any percentages on brain damage from using the internet too much?
I have not researched this area and cannot provide you with an answer.

2) What does the internet do to our brains specifically, if anything?

The Internet provides a way for us to get media to information on almost any topic. I’m wondering if you’re asking if using computers, smart phones, and other devices has an impact on her brain. The answer to that question is that there is a lot of research that screens activate our frontal lobe of our brain. This is the part of her brain that is in charge of planning and organizing. Sleep studies have shown that when people use screens prior to going to bed, but effects are sleep. It takes longer to go to sleep and longer to get into deep sleep. The current recommendation is that all screens are turned off one hour prior to bedtime.

In addition, many people multitask when using electronic devices or computers. By multitasking, I mean that a student might be working on math homework, checking Facebook, texting friends, posting a photo on pintrist, driving, and surfing the web. This would make it much more difficult to complete homework effectively and as you know, has resulted in distracted driving.

3) Does it effect or mess with our emotions and actions?
Getting instant information from the Internet can have a tremendous effect on our emotions and perhaps our actions. People post tweets when they are angry or in the heat of the moment and say things they would never say if they were calm. Gossip and inappropriate photos are posted on the web without thinking about the damage they can cause. A high school student can start a rumor via texting or Facebook and before the end of the day, almost everyone knows about. This instant source of posting our thoughts and feelings can cause a lot of damage.

On the other hand, having instance access to the Internet has allowed me to find a restaurant quickly, not get lost, find out how to help a person in an emergency, look up a YouTube video for how to fix something, and find out that there is an emergency.

As I discussed in question two, multitasking can have a large effect on our actions and ability to get things done.

4) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the internet?
Some of the advantages are instant information at our fingertips on almost any topic of interest. The ability to spread news quickly to a large group of people is another advantage. From an environmental perspective, a lot less paper is being used for example for e-mail. For people with disabilities, the ability to work from home or take a remote learning education is a wonderful advantage.

Some of the disadvantages are similar to the advantages. For example, having the ability to get instant information instead of taking the time to do research could be a disadvantage. Sometimes, information on the Internet is not accurate and I would call it miss information. For example when a person is sick, when you look up symptoms of that illness you often find worst-case scenarios including cancer. Then it turns out the person just had a cold. Of course, another disadvantage has to do with exposure to dangerous material and people, for example child predators and pornography.

5) On a yearly basis, how many hours do we spend on the internet?
I have not studied this topic but I’m sure you can find this via a Google web search.

6) How much of your daily life at home and work is spent on the internet?
This is another topic that I have not researched. However, of course to some extent this would be dependent on what the person does for work or school. It would be important to count all hours on the Internet including computer, smart phones, ipad, streaming videos, etc.

7) While the internet gets better are we going to get less active and less social? Will we lose our ability to interact in person?
People who use the Internet, social networking, text messaging are often very social. But we may have to change our definition of what social interaction is. Many people have lengthy conversations via text message. Some people even communicate with each other via electronic device even when they’re sitting at the same table. At a minimum, is changing how we interact in person. Good with your family, and notice how many people have their phones out. How many kids are playing a video game at dinner. How many people are gathered around a device looking at pictures.

8) What are some ideas that you have on what people would do, if they couldn’t use the internet?
If people couldn’t use the Internet, I suspect that things would go back to how it was 20 to 30 years ago. We would again send letters through the United States Post Office. We would go to the library to do research. We would use phones to call each other.

9) Will the younger generations lose their ability to write and read cursive?
Curse this is no longer being required in Colorado schools is a part or curriculum. Other than learning how to sign your name in cursive there is very little focus in elementary schools are learning cursive. Keyboarding is being taught from an early age now and is certainly a primary way that people are writing these days.

10) What are your thoughts on cyberbullying? What can we do to help stop it?
Cyber bullying is a major topic of concern. We hear about it every week in our news. People threatened other people, make fun of them, really chill them on social networking platforms etc. a furtive kids committing suicide because of cyber bullying so that is a very concerning area. Interestingly, from a legal perspective people who cyber bully leave a path of breadcrumbs of all of the terrible things that they have said or done toward the other person which can result in criminal charges.

An Ohio teen collapses and is rushed to the hospital after a four-day gaming stint leaves him severely dehydrated. An 18-year-old dies when he develops a blood clot after playing “Diablo 3” for 40 hours straight.

While these examples may be extreme, for some kids, gaming becomes more than just a hobby. Ninety-nine percent of boys and 94 percent of girls play video games on a regular basis, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Of these, recent studies place the number of youths that engage in pathological — or problem — gaming at 8.5 to 15 percent. Many parents find themselves asking, “How much is too much?” This parents guide will help you determine if your child is spending too much time gaming.

Video Game Addiction

Pathological gaming shares a number of characteristics with addictive behaviors like gambling or drug abuse, such as personality changes and cravings. However, while some kids can spend a lot of time playing video games without affecting other areas of their lives, other children get “hooked” and experience a significant impact.

Researchers have identified several characteristics and traits that seem to contribute to a higher risk of pathological gaming. These include:

• Starting to play at a young age
• Playing video games for more than 19 hours per week
• Lack of social competence
• Lack of impulse control
• Low levels of empathy for others
• Low self-esteem
• Few friends
• Family history of addiction
• Exhibits thrill-seeking behavior

For many kids, the lure of gaming lies in the ability to become someone else in the game; a shy, awkward teen with few friends can feel dominant, popular and attractive in the virtual world of a game. The allure of this fantasy world simply becomes more appealing than reality.

Warning Signs

If you’re concerned that your child may be spending too much time playing games, keep your eyes open for these warning signs.

• Lack of interest in any activities other than gaming
• Talking about games constantly
• Playing for increasing amounts of time
• Dropping friends and activities that aren’t related to gaming
• Lying about or hiding how much time is spent gaming
• Feeling irritable or anxious when they’re forced or try to disconnect
• Decreased grades and school performance
• Sneaking to play games, such as after bed or after being told not to play
• Staying up late to play games and sleeping in the daytime
• Experiencing cravings when they’re away from the game
• Ignoring personal hygiene and skipping meals to play
• Playing for more than 19 hours per week
• Throwing tantrums or acting violently when forced to stop playing (Known as “Rage Quitting”)

Research indicates that addictive gaming behaviors tend to be more pronounced when kids play online, role-playing games that involve multiple players. Dr. Lazarus, a child psychologist, suggests that parents limit video games to no more than two hours per day, and keep a close eye on gaming behaviors. School work, chores, sports, and other social activites should always be a higher priority and completed before video game time.

If you’re worried that your child is spending too much time gaming, therapy with a child psychologist can help. Dr. Steven Lazarus, a child psychologist in Littleton, CO, can help your family work though these issues together through parent consultation and individual therapy which you child.

Sources:

usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/story/2012-08-08/modern-warfare-3-teen-collapses/56869220/1, http://www.technewsworld.com/story/52916.html http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19354827/#.Ujn93eChDzI, http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/05/tech/gaming-gadgets/gaming-addiction-warning-signs/index.html, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/, http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/01/17/video-game-addiction-tied-to-depression-anxiety-in-kids, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/2/e319.full