Recently I reread the adventures of Tom Sawyer after many years, and I was stunned to discover that Tom's summer vacation doesn't begin until the end of Chapter 21. Memory plays tricks. Tom's glorious idyll of mud, mild rebellion, chaste romance and rampant imagination electrified by a dash of danger and a blaze of heroismhad been filed in my mind under the heading of complete summer freedom. Even the most vivid scenes of Tom in school had ...

When Sabreena Boyd was 11, she stood before the congregation at the New Jerusalem Full Gospel Church in Muscatine, Iowa, and asked for a new family. A member of the church's Sunday school, she had recently been placed in a foster home after her mother could no longer care for her. "I gave a speech saying that I wanted to be adopted by a Christian family, a loving family," recalls SaBreena, now 20. Stuart and Tina Juarez, a recently married ...

In many ways, Claire was a typical 14-year-old. Her favorite store was Forever 21, her favorite food was macaroni and cheese, and her favorite TV show was Bad Girls Club. As a ninth-grader living in St. Louis, she was a member of her school dance team, and she was on Facebook. A pretty and stylish girl, Claire was a strong student whose long-term goal was to become a lawyer. In other ways, however, Claire's life was decidedly not ...

These are fat times in politics. Literally. Nearly 400 obesity-related bills were introduced in state legislatures across the country last year--more than double the number in 2003. A quarter of them were passed into law, up from only 12% two years before. In Washington the word obesity appears in 56 bills introduced during the current Congress; this, the Wall Street Journal points out, is fast catching up with the number containing the word gun. Surgeon General Richard Carmona says obesity ...

Wonder or quack drug?It relieves the pain and swelling of arthritis, heals burns, soothes toothaches, eases headaches and muscle strains, and clears up viral, fungal and bacterial infections. It helps retarded children, prevents paralysis from spinal-cord injuries, and even grows hair on bald pates. And it is safe to use. At least so claim the dedicated defenders of dimethyl sulfoxide , which was enthusiastically promoted as a "wonder drug" in the early 1960s but then fell from grace after the Food and Drug Administration halted its testing ...

From the moment parents absorb the shock that their child may be autistic, they enter a dizzying world of specialists, therapists and, alas, purveyors of snake oil. Getting the right help quickly is paramount, but it is hard to make good decisions when you are in a panic or fighting despair. For the past 20 years, the dominant way to work with autistic children has been based on Applied Behavior Analysis. ABA derives from the classic work of psychologist B.F. ...

Even before the financial and home foreclosure crisis hit full stride, the number of homeless children in America had reached an alarming level. The National Center on Family Homelessness released a report today that estimates that one in every 50 American children was homeless between 2005 and 2006. That totals roughly 1.5 million kids. While the center provided no previous statistic to compare against that figure, a study conducted with different measures published in 2000 put the ...

Guided by burning flares, a transport plane dipped down out of the night over Biafra last week and landed with a shipment of condensed food for the secessionist state's starving population. When soldiers guarding the airstrip saw its cargo, they burst unashamedly into tears. On a country road a few miles away, relief workers held out bits of food to a group of hungry children. They ran, not knowing what to do with it. "We are going to have to ...

Disciplining young children is what parents are supposed to do — most moms and dads have no trouble agreeing with that. But should the punishment include spanking? As many parents can attest, few disciplinary measures stop a child from misbehaving as quickly as a swift smack or two on the bottom. But in a new study published in Pediatrics, researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet that children's short-term response to spanking may make them act out more ...

When the welfare officers came to take three-year-old Archie Roach from his tin-lined house in Framlingham in southeastern Australia, they told his mother they were escorting him to a picnic. His aunt tried to scare them off with a gun, but it wasn't loaded. Institutionalized in a Melbourne orphanage, young Archie was told his family had died in a fire. His minders tried to force his hair straight, breaking comb teeth in his frizzy curls. It was a vain attempt ...