Early Child Development part3

Henry Joseph Hasson, MD Pediatric Neurologist - Children’s Hospital at Montefiore DrMDK.com

Speaker: Really their social interaction because that's one of the most important things in society today. Speaker: If a child in the beginning seem to be a little delayed in some of the things we have discussed, there are developmental stimulation programs. What does that mean? Speaker: Well there is a lot out there to help out or there a lot that people -- Speaker: Oh! Just kid that you would suspect because we are not going to make a diagnose requisite. You have to be a little concerned what to do in some of these things that we trained to look at and not doing with their concern. So, we could put them put them in an environmental progress what does that mean environmental progress? Speaker: Oh! Well the first thing that we do is specially in younger kids below three years of age, we start something called early invention, which is where the city helps out and they fund these program, so that we can add physical therapy or occupational therapy or speech therapy all different programs to help children catch up as early as possible, because again I've being mentioning before that earlier you can diagnose a problem, the early you can start a intervening and helping the child. Speaker: Well, there was a thing in the newspaper a first born seems to have slight high attention than say the second and the third born. Some people think it's because the first one gets all the nurturing and all the attention and they forget the third born, which I haven't debated I don't think we ever saw such parents but, so that could be some of the idea, but stimulation, obviously helps, obviously there is a, too much is bad too is that correct? Speaker: Well, for sure, but again the more you reach to your child, I don't there is a limit in how much you can meet your child and talk to your child. Especially, they are very young and the more you do that, the more could children learn by repeating. The infant brain, the developing brain basically takes in form the environment and he just repeats that and send it back, almost the same ways as you would actually train a pet. Yeah with the child's brain it actually works that way and the more you read them, the more they will be able to communicate and they can have their own language, that they will respond back. Speaker: Well we have learned that every kid likes to be told that he doing a great job. So Positive reinforcement is the way get out the negatives. Speaker: Sure, as the children start getting older and we start giving -- teach them between right and wrong and different things, what to do. Again positive reinforcement works a lot better than negative reinforcement and usually what a lot of people recommend, is when they do the right thing, to give positive reinforcements or the wrong thing, even the lack of any attention, you don't even need to give any negative stimulus by just ignoring them, is sometimes enough that will teach them enough to do that. Speaker: Okay, if we are really considerate about kid's development maybe or it's just -- there are various problems around. Some of you just -- thing called ABA. Are you familiar with ABAs? Speaker: Sure. Speaker: That's the form of behavior -- Speaker: Right an applied behavior therapy and a lot of these programs have been shown to help. It's little difficult to do real world studies on exactly which therapies work better than others. Some clearly seem to be working better, some are much more popular. You have to be careful, because a lot these therapies haven't been tested at all and -- Speaker: But ABA is done by well trained, very motivated workers, probably could help the kid a little bit. Speaker: Yeah, we've seen children do remarkably well with ABA therapy. Remember that, in today's schools system where there are 30-35 kids in a class, little hard to tailor education towards each child and sometimes all the child needs is a different way of learning a different way of looking at things and especially those with the children by giving them the way that they are able learn, they will be able to reach their potential as best as possible. Speaker: With every kid it could be different things that work with one than another. But there are some crazy therapies out there. One is called chelation and the theory behind that is, heavy metals poison the kid and we take it of the body and the kid will wake up and will be cured. Is there any merit to chelation? Speaker: Yeah, you really have to be careful doing lot of things. A lot of us try to avoid any intervention that has been proven to work, especially if it may have side effects in the child. We always go back to the first do no harm that have been taught from way back when that whenever you're dealing with the child especially, you don't want to harm the child, unless you know that the therapy you are doing is safe and effective, we try not to do it. If you look at the FCA trials any clinical trials, they always start with safety, before you even know if it works or not the first stage is the same and if it's not proven to be safe then we try to avoid that. Speaker: But, it was also in the news today that there is about 5000 family suing the makers of vaccines claming, vaccines are the cause of autism. But as we know as pediatricians, that isn't true there have been many capitally review them all -- the cases we can't find any evidence based on it, is there any truth? is that true? Speaker: Yeah, all kind of research show that the vaccines really are not culprit for Autism. Autism is probably genetic. There is definitely, probably environmental factor that - we are not -- it's not clear at this point exactly what, but a lot of people get excited about mercury and about tuna fish, and about all sorts of different things. But the reality is that, even tuna fish, there is just so little mercury, if any in there that it's not going to cause any problems the vaccines, don't even have mercury in them any more, a lot of it has been taken care of and it hasn't affected.