New research on the finicky eating habits of children with autism finds that while autistic children tend to eat a less varied diet than other kids do, their dietary preferences have little negative effect on their height, weight and growth. Researchers at the University of Bristol began with a database of children born from 1991 to 1992 who were enrolled in a long-term study in Avon, England. The children's caregivers completed detailed food questionnaires describing the kids' eating ...

Here's an old bit from a stand-up comic's act: "Some say the glass is half empty. Some say it is half full. I say it's twice as big as it needs to be." This is a story of glasses, not nearly empty, not quite full. Except that the glasses are the children of divorce--a million new ones each year in the U.S.--and what's being measured is their misery. For decades, since a pioneering study by Judith S. Wallerstein in ...

One afternoon when Joanne was nine years old she came home from school and noticed something missing. Her father's jewelry box had disappeared from its usual spot on her parents' bureau. Worse, her mother was still in bed. "Daddy's moved out," her mother told her. Joanne panicked. She began to sob. And even though Joanne is 40 now, a married Los Angeles homemaker with children of her own, she clearly remembers what she did next that day. Her vision blurred ...

Should morbidly obese children be taken from their parents? That's the question an increasing number of countries are grappling with amid the Western world's obesity epidemic. The latest case to make headlines concerns a Scottish couple who lost custody of two of their six children on the basis of what was, their lawyer claims, a failure to reduce the kids' weight following warnings from Scottish social services. The couple lost their Oct. 14 appeal in a case ...

While devastating for severely afflicted children and their families, autism has long been assumed to be relatively uncommon, appearing in perhaps 1% of all kids. But that figure was a rough estimate at best, based largely on the population of children who have already received a diagnosis of the disorder. Discovering the true prevalence of autism would require a large-scale study of an entire population--not just those who showed up at a doctor's office. That's exactly what a team of ...

Luke Perkins has been living "two disparate lives," court documents say: one at school in Berthoud, Colo., where the autistic boy was making some progress, and the other outside school, where the 9-year-old was so unruly he could not take part in such basic activities as going to church or eating in a restaurant. He became so destructive at night that his family resorted to locking him in his bedroom, which had been stripped of furniture because he kept smearing ...

"Put off today what you can do tomorrow" has long been the motto of many baby boomers. Until, that is, the biological clock began its inexorable countdown. Today even some of the most committed postponers of parenthood are finally deciding to have children, producing a record crop of late-in-life babies. The number of women 35 or over who are giving birth for the first time has quadrupled in the past decade, and is expected to increase further in the next ...

Her arrival is often signaled by trumpet fanfares, gun salutes or the strains of "God Save the Queen," but within the privacy of her own homes another sound presages Her Majesty's approach: the pitter-patter of tiny feet. During their stay at Buckingham Palace this month, President Obama and the First Lady will discover that Queen Elizabeth II is rarely parted from her panting devotion of corgis and dorgis . Canine outriders announce her appearance a good few seconds before she ...

How would you like to pay only a quarter of the real estate taxes you owe on your home? And buy everything for the next 10 years without spending a single penny in sales tax? Keep a chunk of your paycheck free of income taxes? Have the city in which you live lend you money at rates cheaper than any bank charges? Then have the same city install free water and sewer lines to your house, offer you a perpetual ...

Grief hangs over the frail face of Bui Thi Me, a communist intellectual contemplating the deaths of three of her sons. For a year in the late 1960s, she had no idea that two of her missing children had perished in central Vietnam while fighting U.S. soldiers. "It took the government a long time to deliver the news in 1969," says the 83-year-old, a retired propagandist and Social-Affairs Minister in Ho Chi Minh City. "I almost gave ...