Parents who frequently telephone their children during internship hours can also give employers the impression the interns are not mature or independent.

Do you call your college-aged child every day, solve all their problems and interfere with their jobs? You could be a helicopter parent.
The hovering behavior, similar to the movement of the aircraft, sparked the term helicopter parenting, which has become a growing trend that experts warn could be damaging, particularly to older children.
“What they tend to do--and it starts early--is they micro manage their children...doing all of these things early on. That’s now carrying over into college,“ said Diana Nash, a counselor at Marymount Manhattan College in New York, reported Reuters.
“It comes from a good place, it comes from them wanting the best for their children, from wanting to make sure their children maximize the opportunity and take advantage of everything, but sometimes it doesn’t always play out for the best.“
Nash and her colleagues said they have noticed that more parents are calling internship directors asking them to “go easy.“ They warned that parents who frequently telephone their children during internship hours can also give employers the impression the interns are not mature or independent.
Massachusetts-based author and independent parenting consultant Sue Blaney said the hovering behavior of parents undermines the child.
“It’s depriving them of the opportunity to develop independence, responsibility and maturity,“ she said.
Blaney, the author of “Please Stop the Rollercoaster! How Parents of Teenagers Can Smooth Out the Ride,“ added that there are many factors that lead to helicopter parenting. “Sometimes it comes from a parent who overly identifies with a child’s success,“ she explained in an interview.
It could also be that the parent is unable to cope with a child’s pain or struggle, or that a child isn’t performing up to a parents’ expectations, so they want to intervene, said Blaney.
She cited examples of the parent who has a different career choice than what the child wants. “By the time the kids get older, they deserve to be chasing their own goals and doing things that are reflective of their own pursuits, not of the parent,“ said Blaney.
Nash and Blaney advised parents to limit daily telephone calls, and said they should not make their children feel like a failure if they do not meet their expectations. Parents also need to train themselves to let go.

China will exempt tuition fees in compulsory education for children living in urban areas from next year.
The State Council has decided to exempt all educational fees of primary and junior high schools from the spring semester of 2008, State Councilor Chen Zhili said, Xinhua reported.
She urged the local governments to make preparations for the new move and ensure enough funds to be allocated for the purpose.
In 2006, China exempted fees for compulsory education from students in rural areas in western regions. The policy was later expanded to central and eastern regions in 2007. Chen said the central government will increase accommodation subsidy for needy students.
The government will provide funds for repairing the dilapidated classrooms in central and western areas, she said while touring China’s Hubei Province earlier this week.

Nearly five million children under the age of five die each year in sub-Saharan Africa, with 25 percent of them losing lives at birth, according to Barbara Beintein, UNICEF’s Africa director.
“This region has recorded the highest infant mortality rate in the world, and also the lowest progress since 1990,“ she said at the 4th Congress of the Association of Franco-Phone Africa Pediatricians in Dakar, IANS reported.
During the last 15 years, Africa has registered a ’slight reduction’ of 3 percent, she said. “If serious progress is not achieved in good time, Africa will not be in a position to attain the millennium development goals in the health sector.“

According to a report, children in communities with high poverty rates and fewer parks are more likely to suffer from obesity than children in affluent areas.
The availability of parks and healthier food options are critical to fighting obesity, said the report presented by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH), wrote Xinhua.
The report used information from the 2004-05 school year provided by the California Department of Education to determine childhood obesity rates in 128 cities and communities throughout the county.
“Cities and communities have a vital role in combating childhood obesity,“ said Jonathan Fielding, director of public health and health officer for the county.
“Those with policies and programs that make physical activity an easy choice and that make healthy food more available have the potential to foster healthier, more active children,“ he said.

Official statistics have connected a nationwide rise in student health problems to unsanitary conditions, poor facilities, heavy study loads and inadequate healthcare services.
Reports from preventive health agencies across Vietnam showed 34 percent of school cafeterias didn’t meet sanitation standards, 74 percent lacked food storage facilities and 59 percent of cafeteria staff didn’t have regular checkups, Thanhniennews.com.
Health officials said there was a growing food hygiene problem responsible for the rise in student food poisonings. In 2006, 93 students suffered from food poisoning. But in the first six months of 2007, the number surged to 299.
The Ministry of Health said meal composition also needed attention, as it was a factor in obesity.
According to another study on drinking water at 996 rural schools, more than half of the schools provided unpasteurized water to students.
A Ministry of Health report also highlighted high rates of intestinal flat worm infection in primary school students. Figures released by the National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health (NIOEH) revealed that myopia was a serious problem among students.
Over five percent of primary school students were nearsighted, with about 15 percent at the junior high level.
According to the Ministry of Health’s Preventive Health Agency (PHA), the lack of funding for school healthcare services was to blame. Only 20 percent of all schools could afford healthcare offices.

Kite festival in Ahvaz, Iran's southern Khuzestan province

At a time when one in every five children studying in Delhi’s schools is overweight or obese and thereby has 70 percent chance of becoming an overweight or obese adult and thus more prone to diabetes, a new study by the Delhi Diabetes Research Centre on “changing food patterns in children“ has revealed that junk food culture is rapidly on the rise among the children despite severe health risks, reported Hindu.com.
According to DDRC Chairman Ashok Jhingan, the study was undertaken in eight private schools of Delhi and 1,155 children studying in Class III, IV and V were asked six questions about their eating habits. The questions were deliberately designed to properly assess the food habits, choice of food and factors contributing for this change in eating patterns.
The study threw up some startling facts. It revealed that 39 percent of the children preferred eating burgers and soft drinks over traditional food.
Further, 31 percent preferred to have a pizza along with a soft drink. Only an abysmal 11 percent preferred eating fruits.
As many as 44 percent of the children surveyed said they had at least one soft drink a day. Also it was revealed that along with age the preference for fast food increased.

Khaldoun, 17, was born healthy. When he was nearly eight months old, he became feverish. His mother refused to take him to the doctor because she did not consider it her responsibility; rather she thought it his father’s.
Finally they went to the doctor who told them that Khaldoun needed immediate treatment or his temperature would lead to brain damage.
His mother disregarded the doctor’s advice and said, again, that it was his father’s responsibility, not hers. But his father also shirked his parental responsibilities to take his son for treatment, reported Yobserver.com.
Khaldoun was never taken to the doctor, and now has brain damage because of his parents’ negligence. They refused to take him to the doctor because of their personal distaste for each other, and Khaldoun had to pay dearly.
Many children find themselves on the streets or in prison due to no fault of their own; they run away to the streets to escape their parents. They believe they would be happier in the streets where they do not have to witness their parents’ disagreements.
Divorce and disputes among couples is a major cause of homelessness among Yemeni children.
Although many divorces follow years of tension between husbands and wives, the tension level typically increases during and after a divorce proceedings. Parents who try to turn their children against the other spouse create an absolutely impossible situation for that child.
Divorce often hinders the development of a child’s personality and dents their confidence. They become controlled by feelings of anxiety and despair. These children often lose the feeling of security and love from their parents.
Divorce rates in Yemen have been rising over the last few years, at the same time that arranged marriages have allegedly been increasing. Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that in 2005, 3,260 marriages out of 48,085 ended in divorce.
These numbers are up from 2004, when there were only 1,217 divorces out of 36,165 marriages, and also from 2003, when there were 1,457 divorces out of 27,244 marriages.

Many children in Britain who are waiting for an adoptive family are left in care.

Hundreds of children are facing a life trapped in the care system after the number of people willing to adopt fell to its lowest level in almost a decade in UK. There were 4,764 adoptions in Britain last year--a fall of almost 10 per cent from 2005 and the lowest number since 1998.
Adoption charities say children are missing out on finding permanent families because of the widespread view that the adoption process in Britain is too difficult, Telegraph.co.uk reported.
Other would-be parents are turning to adoption agencies abroad, because the process of bringing home a foreign child is viewed as less bound by red tape.
The result is that many more of the 4,000 children in Britain who are waiting for an adoptive family are left in care.
A recent survey by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) found that although more than a fifth of respondents had thought about adopting a child, many believed that being over 40, unmarried or unemployed would rule them out. In reality, the charity says, there are no blanket bans and adoptive parents can come from all backgrounds.
Data on children from the care system alone shows that in the year ending March 2007, 400 fewer children were adopted than the previous 12 months.
David Holmes, the chief executive of the BAAF, says the decline is partly explained by the “alarming misconceptions“ about modern adoption as well as the new special guardianship procedure--an alternative.
After a flurry of overseas adoptions by high-profile figures, the BAAF hopes to encourage prospective parents to consider children in the UK care system.
“Often, inter-country adoptions have a very high profile but in fact there are 10 times more adoptions from our own care system than from abroad. People need to understand that adoption really does happen in this country,“ Holmes added.

If you thought stress is something that is associated with elders, then you are wrong. With rising consumerism among children in the age group of six-twelve, stress in children is becoming common, say child psychologists, PTI said.
“Children start expressing from the age of five-six. Since, in the present time, parents tend to buy everything branded for their kids, the kid becomes brand conscious earlier than before. It can be anything from branded high end shoes to even jazzy mobile phones.“
“Parents are blamed for rising consumerism among kids since they are the ones who first inculcate such a behavior in the children. And when the children wishes are not fulfilled, stress starts creeping in them,“ says Dr. Ekta Sharma, a child psychologist based in India.