Students at Lionville Middle School in Exton, Pa. have morning gym class two out of every six days. David and Cathy McLaughlin say their diabetic 11-year-old son Jack needs more exercise than that.

School authorities disagree.

Gym classes rotate with music and reading-skills classes. School authorities tell the Philadelphia Inquirer that the McLaughlins have been offered exercise options for Jack that don't cut into those other classes.

A normal pregnancy lasts for 40 weeks. If a baby is born three or more weeks early, she is considered premature. Babies born close to 37 weeks usually do not have many problems, but babies born between 32 and 37 weeks may need to stay in the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to receive help eating, breathing, staying warm, and continuing to develop before going home. Babies born before 32 weeks are the most likely to have serious problems and may have to stay in the NICU for an extended period of time.

Preterm babies must often be tube-fed or even fed intravenously (through a vein) because they cannot eat on their own. Others need ventilators to help them breathe. Premature babies also can have difficulties staying warm, so they are kept in heated beds called isolettes.

A neonatologist is a doctor who specializes caring for preterm babies. If the hospital you choose to deliver your baby at has a NICU on-site, you will be introduced to the staff neonatologist. If your baby needs to be moved to another hospital, you can ask your ob/gyn for a reference or you can find a doctor on the Revolution Health web site.

Check out ParentDish to learn about amazing premature babies and Pregnancy & Birth.

Brendan Adams' mother didn't want him to play middle school football. She was afraid he might get hurt.

Wait a minute. Brendan is almost 7-feet-5-inches tall -- the tallest teenager on the planet, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. And she's worried about him getting hurt?

The sad irony is it took a lot of work to get Brendan on the gridiron. His mother's concerns are more than justified. The 14-year-old eighth-grader from Ellensburg, Wash., about 100 miles east of Seattle, has health problems as formidable as his height. His body is full of tumors. His joints are enlarged. And doctors recently discovered an arrhythmia in his heart.

Gene therapy helped a 9-year-old boy recover from a disease that stole his sight away, and doctors are calling the results of his treatment "near biblical." Credit: NBC Philadelphia.

Corey Hass was born with Leber's Congenital Amaurosis and the disease ravaged the 4th-grader's sight to the point that he was left completely blind a little more than a year ago, according to NBC Philadelphia.

Ten months after son Jett's death, John Travolta finally admitted during an extortion trial that the 16-year-old had suffered from autism. Actress Holly Robinson Peete, whose 12-year-old son, Rodney Jr., also has the disorder, says she wishes John had spoken sooner.

"Were there times I said to myself, Ooh, if somebody that A-list comes out, what could he do for the movement? Yeah, I wished that," the former 21 Jump Street star tells Life & Style.

Still, she says, "I don't blame the Travoltas for not talking about it. I would never tell someone what to say about their kid."

Along with her husband, former NFL star Rodney Peete, Holly founded the HollyRod Foundation, which raises money for families dealing with autism and similar conditions. She says it was a family decision for the Peetes to go public with Rod Jr.'s condition, and she hopes John can find solace in doing the same.

"The fact that posthumously he had to say that on the stand, I wasn't glad about it," she says. "But I was relieved he was able to have closure."

A British 7-year-old who was born blind uses a technique similar to that of dolphins and bats to "see" his surroundings.

Lucas Murray uses echos to visualize his environment, and according to The Sun he may be the first person in Britain to use the method, called echolocation. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth to locate objects based on how the sound bounces back to him.

Lucas's family learned of the technique when they saw Californian Daniel Kish on TV and asked him to visit the family at their home in Poole, Dorset. Kish, 41, founded the World Access for the Blind and taught Lucas to use echolocation over an intense, three-day period, according to The Sun.

"I really like the clicking system, but it was quite hard to learn," Lucas told that newspaper.

The pills help them concentrate, stay awake longer and finish their work faster.

The kids who take these drugs can impress their parents and teachers and feel a little less different among other kids who don't share their challenges.

And if one pill helps, then two or three should ...

You can see where this is going. The September issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, reports that abuse of drugs prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increased 75 percent between 1998 and 2005.

"We looked at all the poison centers across the nation and found a significant increase in the number of calls for ADHD medication abuse that parallels the amount of prescriptions being written," Dr. Jennifer Setlik, an emergency physician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and an author of the study, said in a story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday.

Setlik said the study looked only at poison control centers. However, she said in the story, it gives parents and physicians a good snapshot.

Although Pediatrics is sounding the alarm, the problem is not new. In 2006, The Washington Post cited a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse that estimated that more than 1.6 million American teenagers and young adults misused prescription drugs for ADHD during a 12-month period,and 75,000 became addicted.

Researchers in the study cited in Pediatrics looked at poison control centers over an eight-year period and found that the total number of calls went from 330 in the first year of the study to 581 in the last year. During the same time, prescriptions for Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta and other ADHD medications rose 80 percent for all young children and teenagers.

ADHD reportedly affects roughly between 8 and 12 percent of U.S. children and 4 percent of adults, according to American Academy of Pediatrics statistics.

The academy's study claims that ADHD prescription drugs are the most commonly abused drugs among teenagers after marijuana.

"Fifty percent of kids report never hearing a single word about prescription drug abuse, but these drugs are just as dangerous, just as addictive and just as deadly as illicit drugs" said Tom Hedrick, one of the founders of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, according to the Journal-Constitution story.

"Right now parents may feel a sense of relief that their kids are taking prescription medicines and not street drugs," Hedrick said. "But what we really have is the perfect storm because there's a lack of awareness and an ease of availability."

Just as one of their greatest champions died, disabled children got more bad news.

Disabled children are more likely to be spanked and subjected to other forms of physical punishment than other kids, according to a study released by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

This news broke just as the world learned of the death early Tuesday morning of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of John F. Kennedy and the founder of Special Olympics. Shriver, 88, spent most of her adult life devoted to the rights of people with developmental disabilities.

Those rights stand in jeopardy in the 20 states that don't restrict schools from practicing corporal punishment, said Alice Farmer, who wrote the report released by the human rights groups.

"Corporal punishment is not an effective means of punishment, especially for disabled children, who may not even understand why they are being hit," she told The New York Times.

The report is based on data from the U.S. Department of Education. It looked at 223,190 students who were paddled across the country during the 2006-07 school year. Although children with disabilities make up a total of 14 percent of the school population, they accounted for 19 percent (or 41,972) of the paddlings.

Paddling was still common in the United States up until the 1970s, when only two states banned the practice. Corporal punishment remains legal in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida,Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Among the specific incidents recited by the report is a case where a 6-year-old boy with autism was spanked with an inch-thick paddle by his 300-pound assistant principal in Missouri.

"When a child with autism has something like that happen they don't forget it," his grandmother was quoted in the Times. "It is always fresh in their minds."

Meanwhile, the world mourns Eunice Kennedy Shriver and remembers her approach to special-needs children.

"Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a visionary who devoted her life to creating a better and more inclusive world for people with disabilities," Mary McAleese, the president of Ireland, told the Irish Times.

Okay, raise your hand if you spank your kids.

Bee afraid, bee very afraid

Researchers at Whatsamatta U recently conducted a study that might interest autistic children and their parents.

First, researchers took 12 laboratory mice and subjected them to bee stings. Then they took another 12 mice to the faculty parking lot -- and ran them over with a '93 Buick LeSabre.

All in all, it turns out, the mice reported that it hurts a lot more to be hit by a Buick than stung by a bee.

My sarcastic tales of fake scientific studies have no effect on my son. My bee-phobic, autistic 13-year-old son will continue to run out into the street when he sees one of these flying monsters.

As a high-functioning autistic lad, a certain amount of irrational anxiety is part of the job description. However, even he should be able to grasp the Bee Vs. Buick paradigm.

Certain life principles, one would hope, are self-evident. For example, bees generally leave you alone if you act indifferent toward them. You have no use for them? "Well then," they buzz indignantly, "to hell with you."

But if you run through their neighborhood screaming and flailing your arms over your head, they are apt to say, "Merciful heavens, comrades! There seems to be a rogue primate among the azaleas. En garde, beast!"

At this point, you will get stung.

I understand my son's fear. I suffer from melissophobia myself. That's the scientific term for a fear of bees ("melissa" being the Greek word for honeybee). I also have a fear of women named Melissa, but that's another story.

I know the source of my son's fear. It's the fear of the unknown. He's never been stung. Neither have I. Neither has my 73-year-old mother. Given that we have no firsthand experience with bee stings, my son knows that we really don't know what it feels like.

A Portland, Or. newspaper buddy of mine, Kendra Hogue, has the same problem with her 15-year-son who also has high-functioning autism. "Carter hates all bugs with a passion usually reserved for ex-spouses, moronic political figures and mimes," said Kendra.

Carter, too, has never been stung. "But that doesn't stop him from screaming and running across the yard like an ungainly Carl Lewis," Kendra said.

Strangely, Carter gets regularly stung by mosquitoes -- the one insect that holds no terror for him, even though he's allergic to them. "The bites swell up to the size of a silver dollar and harden and don't heal for weeks," Kendra said.

To help Kendra, me, and other parents who suffer with kids who do the bee freak-out, Susan Stiffelman, a family therapist and advice columnist at Grandparents.com, offers the following list of solid suggestions for dealing with children and their fear of bees.

• Be caring without fueling the drama. If he sees a bee and panics, stay relaxed and calm. Allow him to run into the house without making a fuss or creating a scene. If you insist that he stay outdoors when he feels such a desperate need to go in, you'll be jeopardizing your authority.

• Wait for a calm moment when the danger has passed to ask him to tell you about the fear, and how he feels when he spots a bee. Ask, "What is it like for you when you see one? What do you think might happen?" When he begins to talk, don't interrupt or try to correct him or her. Just say sympathetic things that will encourage him to continue, like, "That does sound scary." Your empathy can help lessen the intensity of his fear.

• Take him seriously. He will not be receptive to your advice if he feels you're minimizing his fear. But if he feels you've listened and understood, and he's had some time to calm down, he'll listen to your suggestions. Offer to share your ideas for dealing with his fear so he can have lots of fun outdoors with the rest of the family.

• Suggest small, measurable steps you're sure he can handle, to help desensitize him to his fear. For example, start with staying outside for 10 or 20 seconds after he spots a bee. As he's able to stretch the time he stays outside with a bee around, hopefully some of his anxiety will relax.

• Teach him to assign a number to her level of fear - 1 for okay, 10 for terrified. Have him announce what number he's at on the scale while he's outside - first, when he's across the yard from a bee, then, when he's closer. In part, this will make his anxiety, feel more like a game, but more important, being asked to keep thinking and evaluating will turn up the volume on his left brain, helping him remain rational even if there are bees around.

• When things calm down, try doing a project together that will help make bees less terrifying. Check out library books, watch videos, or read information online about bee societies, their amazing dances, or their fascinating communication strategies. Bees may become more interesting when he learns that their wings beat 11,400 times per minute, or that, in his lifetime, a worker bee will produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.

What's the buzz on bees at your house?

Jenny McCarthy is wrong, according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic.

Diet does not contribute to autism.

The autism activist who started her career as a model and Playboy playmate has made a crusade out of her belief that food allergies and childhood vaccines are major contributors to the rising number of children diagnosed with the neurological disorder.

However, Mayo Clinic researchers tracked 124 kids with autism for more than 18 years and compared them with "typical" children. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC News' senior medical editor, was emphatic in reporting the researchers' conclusions.

"These findings are very conclusive," she said on the "Today" show following the release of the study Monday in the journal Pediatrics. "There is no link between illnesses of the gut and the signs and symptoms we see in children with autism."

This is good news for parents, she told viewers. "Because its means if you're putting your child on a restricted diet, or if you're doing colonics (which is a type of enema), if you're using extra vitamins and nutrients, and you're spending a lot of money and putting your child through that, there is no reason to," she said.

Children should only be put on wheat- or dairy-free diets after undergoing diagnostic tests, Dr. Samar H. Ibrahim told The New York Times. She is a pediatric fellow in gastroenterology and an instructor in pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic, as well as one of the principal authors of the report.

"There is actual no trial that has proven that a gluten-free and casein-free diet improves autism," she said. "The diets are not easy to follow and sometimes cause nutritional deficiencies."

Physicians listed with the advocacy organization Defeat Autism Now stick to their belief in the link between food and autism.

Dr. Rochelle Neally, a chiropractor at the Long Beach Autism Center in California questions large-scale medical studies. They are often backed by the big money of monolithic pharmaceutical companies," she said.

"What they call 'scientific' are these expensive double-blind tests," she said. "I tend to believe what I see in my office and what I've seen at the autism conferences I've attended for the past 10 years."

What she sees, she said, are often dramatic improvements in children's behavior when they are placed on a special diet. "The proof is in the pudding," she added.

The gluten-free pudding, that is.

That's the problem, according to traditional researchers. Practitioners such as Neally base their conclusions on anecdotal evidence rather than hard scientific investigation. "I think there's room for both," said Neally.

However, she said parents with autistic children are increasingly unsatisfied with science that comes without answers. "Parents are rebelling against traditional medicine," Neally said.

Dr. Eileen Comia, M.D., in Bloomfield, Conn., is another physician allied with Defeat Autism Now. She said smaller-scale studies are needed. "Any doctor who says there's no link between diet and autism hasn't read a single article on the subject," she said.

Actually, believers in the link between mind and tummy have read too many articles -- inaccurate ones, Dr. Patricia Manning Courtney, medical director of the Kelly O'Leary Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, told US News and World Report.

"A couple of highly publicized cases of autism and loose stools in the 1990s led to an impression that children with autism had a higher rate of GI [gastrointestinal] dysfunction," she said. "It wasn't well characterized, but that got the story onto the national scene."

There is a link between diet and autism, Ibrahim said The New York Times, but not the one McCarthy and Defeat Autism Now physicians believe. Children with autism are often picky eaters. With limited diets, they often have more cases of constipation.

Restricting their diet choices even more than they do themselves only makes the problem worse, she told the paper.

"We did find that two specific problems -- constipation and feeding issues -- were more common in children with autism," Ibrahim told WebMD Health News.

For children who are visually impaired, going to preschool often means being separated from their sighted peers. Attending special schools with adapted curriculum and classrooms, these children are allowed to take their first steps toward living independent and productive lives. But since preschool is as much about socialization as it is about education, does learning apart from their sighted peers exact a social price?

The non-profit organization Lighthouse International believes it does and has created a first-of-its-kind program that allows visually impaired children to learn alongside sighted children in the same preschool classrooms. At the Lighthouse International School in New York, all students learn a standard curriculum with minor adaptations made for those who are visually impaired. The bookshelves hold regular and braille versions of the same books and writing paper is raised so students can feel their work.

"The kids that are visually impaired, they're getting a regular preschool experience just like every other child should get," says Lighthouse International School principal Gregory Santamoor.

About this time of year, high school students across the country begin pairing up into well-dressed couples to attend what will likely be the most memorable party of their young lives. Yes, it's prom season and it's a very big deal.

But for some students, prom night is just another night on which they don't quite fit in. Special needs kids often spend their school years excluded from the social activities and rites of passage that many of us take for granted. But Helen McCormick, president of a Virginia-based nonprofit called The House, Inc., believes that every kid, regardless of ability and social status, should experience the magic of prom night and she's doing something to make sure that they do.

For the past four years, she has organized a prom night specifically for special needs kids who otherwise might never experience the glitz and glamor of a formal event held in their honor. "We are dreaming for children who are excluded from their proms, and ... you're going to see people walk through the doors who are going to be just absolutely mesmerized," she says.

Here's a little Brain 101: The amygdala is the part of your brain helps you identify and "read" faces, something known as joint attention. "When you see a face, you scan it, identify if it's friend or foe and make a decision about whether to move forward or avoid it," neurologist Dr. Barry Kosofsky recently told CNN.

That small part of the brain might help researchers make big gains in autism intervention. Joint attention is an important characteristic of autism, and a recent study found that by age two, the amygdala is up to 13 percent larger in children with autism.

"Many studies have observed the brain grows too big in kids with autism, but this study finds that by age 2, the amygdala is already bigger and stops growing," says Kosofsky. "So it tells us the critical difference has already developed. It now poses the question: Are children born with autism or does it develop in the first two years of life?"

When a school in South Australia decided to raise money for a Bangladeshi clinic that repairs cleft lips and palates in children, they knew they needed to first raise awareness among their students. But how do you get children excited about helping disabled children? After what must have been a good five minutes of consideration, the Student Representative Council at Ramco Primary School hit upon an idea: Have a "disability day" at school and let the students dress up like disabled kids! And give prizes for the best-dressed disabled person!

School officials loved the idea and sent a note home to parents: "There will be prizes for the best students dressed as a person with a disability. Get your thinking hats on and see what disability you can represent!"

Not surprisingly, this did not go over well with parents who recognize the difference between raising awareness and making light of disabilities. Just how does one dress like a disabled person anyway?

Other interested parties weighed in with their displeasure as well. Paralympic gold medalist Matt Cowdrey gave the school the benefit of the doubt when it came to their intentions, but agreed that this was not the best way to raise attention.

"People with disabilities want to be treated and should be treated no different to anybody else in the community," says Cowdrey.

School officials backpedaled as fast as they could, insisting that the note parents received didn't explain the fundraiser clearly. Principal Barrey Niven said the intention was for students to come to school with bandaged arms or legs in order to get a feel for what it is like to be disabled. But even that explanation didn't calm the outrage and the whole pretend-to-be-disabled idea has wisely been scrapped. Instead of bandages, students will mark "disability day" by wearing bright colors and badges with smiley faces.

As soon as Bristol Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren aired last week on FOXNews, cable news channels and blogs began burning up with the juicy revelation that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter believes that abstinence is "not realistic at all." CNN.com even had a red flag ticker that read: "Watch Bristol Palin say abstinence is 'not realistic at all.'"

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I'm just glad that I saw the whole interview before reading the blogs because Bristol's "abstinence" comment was not necessarily the headline for me. For me, this interview painted a bigger picture of the Palin family and I was touched by the love they share. This is a family that takes care of each other and has stuck together despite what has unquestionably been a challenging past six months.

I found Bristol to be a refreshingly honest, albeit unsophisticated, young woman who is (no surprise) both overwhelmed and overjoyed by the birth of her child. Through timid, valley-girl vernacular and nervous laughter, we learned about her struggle to deal with night-feedings, high school, and the sudden change of plans and focus that the birth of a child entails. She convincingly told the audience that being a teen mom is not glamorous, and yet it was easy to see that she is in love with her baby.

After watching her interview, including a surprise visit from her mom, I came away with an admiration for how this very real, imperfect, and loving family is handling this difficult situation. The Palins "circled the wagons" (Sarah's words) and are fully supporting their daughter, who made a courageous and thoroughly selfless decision to bring her child into this world. Grandma Palin admits, "it's not the most ideal situation, but certainly you make the most of it."

No, it won't be easy, and Bristol clearly knows she is not prepared to handle it alone. "This is a role for families to pitch in and help," says Sarah Palin. When Bristol tells Greta that she wishes she had waited another ten years, it was heartbreaking to hear the tinge of regret in her voice. "I wished it would have happened in, like, 10 years so I could have a job and an education and be, like, prepared and have my own house and stuff."

Critics like Salon.com's Rebecca Traister will always find fault with the Palins, but when faced with life's challenges -- an unplanned pregnancy, or in Sarah's case, news that she was carrying a Down Syndrome child (90% of which end in abortion) -- this is a family that lives their values. It was Mother Theresa who said: "It is a great poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." By that measuring stick, the Palins indeed are rich.