Stone Soup by Jan Eliot (GoComics.com)
If you are like most parents, you worry about your children. A lot! Those worries, it turns out, are seldom silly. A new report from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health ranks the top 10 children’s health concerns by adults. The top 10 “Big Problems” are:
- Childhood Obesity
- Bullying
- Drug Abuse
- Internet Safety
- Child Abuse and Neglect
- Sexting
- Smoking and Tobacco Use
- School Violence
- Teen Pregnancy
- Stress
As if those ten aren’t enough to worry about:
Other child health concerns rated as a “big problem” in 2015 for children and teens across the U.S. include: unsafe neighborhoods (40%), alcohol abuse (39%), sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS (38%), depression (38%), suicide (37%), hunger (34%), not enough opportunities for physical activity (31%), gun-related injuries (30%), motor vehicle accidents (30%), attention deficit disorder (26%), autism (24%), safety of medications (17%) safety of vaccines (15%) infant mortality (13%) and food allergies ( 13%).
Where would you rank all these concerns? For younger people I’d replace teen pregnancy with hunger. For teens, I worry more about random events like being a victim of violence (especially from guns, which are ubiquitous in our society), motor vehicle accidents, and infectious diseases. For every one of our children I also worry about pollution, our warming planet, and climate change.
How about you?