MONDAY, Dec. 5, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- American kids are drinking to excess less and abusing marijuana more, a new study finds.Marijuana abuse among 6- to 18-year-olds has increased 245% since 2000, while child alcohol abuse has steadily declined over those years, say researchers who analyzed poisonings over two decades. "This dramatic increase does coincide with this huge wave of decriminalization in the U.S.," said lead researcher Dr. Adrienne Hughes, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.And use of cannabis has evolved over the years, too."We're seeing that adolescents are moving away from smoking weed, and they're moving on to alternative modes of consumption," like edibles, Hughes said. "A lot of times they're marketed in ways that...

MONDAY, Dec. 5, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Young girls tend to babble their way to bigger vocabularies earlier than boys, and researchers now think they might know why.It has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with parental interaction, researchers assert.Parents tend to talk more to young children who have started talking and can respond to them, regardless of gender, according to data derived from more than 2,000 hours of observation.In turn, those conversations fuel language development among the children."This study provides evidence that children actively influence their own language environments as they grow," said lead researcher Shannon Dailey, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University in Durham, N.C.Appropriately, today is National Communicate With Your Kids Day --...

SUNDAY, Dec. 4, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Getting toys for some of the tots in your life this holiday season? Experts at Penn State Health offer tips on making safe choices.Each year, about 200,000 U.S. children end up in the emergency room with a toy-related injury, ranging from poisoning to choking hazards, according to Jen Lau, program manager of Pediatric Trauma and Injury Prevention at Penn State Health Children’s Hospital in Hershey, Pa.“Not all toys are safe,” said Dr. Mary Catherine Santos, a pediatric surgeon at the hospital. “We see problems with children requiring surgery or having traumatic injuries from toys where the child isn’t supervised or the toy is given to a child of the wrong age.”Among the biggest concerns are button batteries or magnets.If ingested,...