Kids, Parenting | featured news

America’s intake of sugary foods and drinks has dropped in recent years, but U.S. kids are still consuming too much, government researchers say. Added sugars make up about 16 percent of a typical child's diet, regardless of family income.

To send your snot-nosed, hacking child to school or not: That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to miss yet another round of critical meetings, deadlines or social obligations to nurse him at home or suffer the slings and arrows of angry fellow parents . . . . Well, you get the picture.

An Alabama woman has given birth the same day she was arrested for the death of her 9-year-old stepdaughter, who authorities say died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for eating a candy bar....

A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics....

Authorities in the Atlanta area searched Wednesday for two children who were reported kidnapped by a stranger who offered to help the family when their car broke down on the side of an interstate highway.

China does not permit surrogate parenting, but that country's rising affluence has given many couples the option of using U.S. surrogacy clinics. Americans have long gone to China to adopt babies.

Martin Bernard Springer, a second-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles, allegedly fondled two girls within the last three years. He has taught at the school since 1986. An elementary school in South Los Angeles was left reeling Friday after authorities arrested a second teacher accused of lewd acts with students.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) tend to be preoccupied with screen-based media. A new study by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looks at how children with ASDs spend their "screen time."

Susan Elmer juggles the many needs of her 15-year-old son, Timothy, who has lived most of his life with Asperger's syndrome, a condition considered on the spectrum of autism disorders. The telltale signs of Asperger's -- which include communication difficulties, obsession with narrow subjects and a difficulty picking up on certain social cues -- make crucial activities like learning in a school setting a challenge.