Parents Must Teach Kids Better Traffic Skills

For families with children, it’s a familiar scenario: During holiday vacation, restless youngsters beg to go anywhere--down the street to a friend’s or to a nearby park--by themselves.

When parents let kids strike out on their own, they’re likely to overestimate their youngsters’ pedestrian skills, a new study shows.

The most common mistake is allowing children to cross the street before they are old enough, says University of Washington pediatrician Abraham Bergman, who surveyed 2,400 Seattle parents.

Parents also underestimate the risk of pedestrian injuries, says Bergman, whose survey results appear in this month’s Pediatrics. He found that parents surveyed were largely unaware that traffic accidents, many involving pedestrians, are the most common cause of serious injury and death in young children.

“Children under age 8 should not cross busy streets alone,” says Bergman.

Instead of enforcing strict age guidelines, Don Rector, Los Angeles Unified School District’s supervisor of traffic safety education, suggests parents demonstrate to their children such pedestrian skills as street crossing and vigilance in traffic. Then, he adds, parents should decide whether the child feels both competent and comfortable.

Other ways to decrease injury risk are:

* Use programs such as the L.A. School District’s pedestrian route program, which distributes neighborhood maps with suggested routes home.

* Pay special attention to younger children. “Preschool kids and kindergartners through third-graders have tremendously higher risk of pedestrian injuries,” Rector says.

* Don’t have a false sense of security about crosswalks. Pedestrians are more likely to be killed at intersections with crosswalks than at those without, at least one study shows.

Warm Up Before Horsing Around

When grandchildren come for holiday visits, roughhousing can be fun for both generations--but painfully hard on grandparents’ shoulders, backs, hips and knees, warns physical therapists. “To prevent injury, warm up before activity,” Jacqueline Acosta, a physical therapist at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital, tells grandparents. “That’s especially true if grandchildren are lively and grandparents are usually sedentary.”

Among warm-up exercises recommended by the American Physical Therapy Assn.:

* Arch and flex your back.

* Turn your head from side to side.

* Standing with feet apart and hands on the hips, rotate the upper body.

* Take short walks.

New Findings on Timing of Pap Tests

For years, doctors have debated how often women should get Pap tests to detect cervical cancer.

Many doctors now recommend that women get their first Pap test at age 18 (sooner if they’re sexually active) and get yearly tests until three consecutive tests show no evidence of abnormal cells. After that, it’s up to the doctor to decide whether exams should be done annually or less frequently.

Now, however, a new study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology says a woman who waits more than two years between tests can quadruple her cancer risk.

The University of Washington researchers found women who waited three years between Pap tests were almost four times as likely to get cervical cancer as those who had the test every year or every two years.

Still, yearly Pap tests are the best idea for women in high-risk groups, contends Richard H. Nalick, director of gynecologic oncology at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. Women at high risk include those with multiple sex partners, those who had first intercourse at an early age and those with a history of sexually transmitted diseases. “These days, the majority of women 18 to 35 are in a high-risk group,” he says.

Moral Support Helps Men Stay In Shape

Formerly pudgy men who want to maintain their weight loss should exercise in a supportive environment, says a Stanford psychologist.

In her one-year follow-up study of men who have each lost 8 to 10 pounds, Abby King found that those who got moral support for their exercise program gained back 1 to 2 pounds, but those who got no moral support gained back 8.5 pounds.

The moral support doesn’t have to be as pricey as a personal trainer. It can be nothing more than a monthly phone call from a co-worker, a periodic nudge from a friend, or maybe even a good-natured nag from a spouse.